Chapter 16
“We shall have to give her a name,” said Grimes to Sanchez as he and the pilot made their way along the catwalk running from stem to stern inside the airship. “LP17 is too . . . impersonal. Ships are more than just . . . things.’”
“What do you have in mind. Your Excellency?”
Grimes thought hard. There had been quite a few ships for which he had felt a real affection, most recently Little Sister and Sister Sue. He grinned.
“Fat Susie,” he said. “She is rather plump, isn’t she? I’ll tell Mr. Jaconelli to organize painters for you to put the new name on the envelope. And at the same time they can change the insignia on the tail fins. I want a kangaroo instead of that tomcat of Bardon’s.”
“People might think,” said Sanchez, “that you’re naming the ship after Su Lin.”
“She’s not fat,” Grimes told him. “But there was a fat Susie, not so very long ago.”
(He wondered where she was now, how she was faring.)
He inspected the comfortable lounge with its wide out-and-down looking windows on either side, the not-too-Spartan sleeping accommodation, the little galley with a standard autochef. This, if he was going to make much use of Fat Susie, would have to be modified to his requirements. He spent some time in the control cab, familiarizing himself with the instrumentation. It would not take him long, he thought, to learn how to fly this thing.
“She’ll do,” he said at last.
He was first down the ladder with Sanchez not far behind him. As he dropped to the ground he heard the air pump start up to pressurize the helium in one of the cells to compensate for the loss of weight.
Sanchez, who would now be living in the Residence, dined with him that evening, the two men taking their meal in Grimes’s sitting room. (He had decided to use the dining room only for state occasions.) They were waited upon by Su Lin. The meal was a good one, traditional New Cantonese cookery. The pilot wielded his ivory chopsticks with as much assurance as did Grimes.
There was no need for Su Lin to activate what Grimes thought of as the anti-bug; conversation consisted mainly of generalities and of astronautical shop talk. Finally Sanchez said good night and left. Su Lin brought more tea, for herself and Grimes.
She said, “I am switched on.”
“Indeed? And what are we talking about. Su Lin? I have to call you that as I don’t know your real name.”
She laughed. “As far as the bugs are concerned you’re living up to your reputation. Casanova Grimes, the terror of the space ways.”
“Do people really think of me like that?”
“Some of them do. Pirate, libertine. . . . Oh, you’ve a reputation all right.”
“Mphm.”
“if Bardon thinks that you’re spending all your time womanizing he’ll not be expecting you to start putting your foot down with a firm hand.”
“Mphm.”
He looked at her. It was obvious that she was enjoying being herself and not playing the part of a faithful handmaiden.
He said, “You were just going to tell me who you’re really working for when Raoul came in.”
“Yes, I was. Do you really want to know, Your Excellency?”
“As long as we’re in private you can call me John.”
“I am honored, John. I’m with Pat.”
With Pat? Did she mean that she had an Irish boyfriend, Grimes wondered, and therefore out of bounds as far as he was concerned? But PAT was an acronym, he remembered. PAT. People Against Tyranny. He recalled the first time that he had heard of this organization; it was during a spell ashore between ships at Lindisfarne Base. A dictatorial planetary president had been assassinated and PAT had claimed the credit for this act of justice. There had been some discussion of the affair in the junior officers’ mess.
“Aren’t you running rather a risk telling me, Su?”
“I don’t think so, Captain Grimes, Survey Service Reserve.”
“My Reserve Commission is supposed to be a secret.”
“It is—and PAT CC, Pat Central Committee, are among those keeping that secret.”
“Do you mean to tell me that Admiral Damien is one of your members? If ever there was a tyrant, he’s one!”
“So you say. But we have members everywhere. On Electra, for example. Silverman, the scientist/salesman, really came here just to check the bugs in the Residence and to supply me with the counter measure. But getting back to Damien—didn’t it ever occur to you that, when he was O.C. Couriers and you a courier captain, he was always sending you on missions in the hope, usually realized, that you’d throw a monkey wrench into somebody’s machinery at the right time?”
“You could look at it that way.”
“And when it was necessary to put a stop to the privateering operations of Drongo Kane and the Eldorado Corporation—just who did Admiral Damien pressgang back into the Survey Service?”
“Me. All right, then. Since PAT seems to have been using me for the Odd Gods of the Galaxy alone know how many years, why have I never been asked to become a member?”
“Because you’re an awkward bastard. You’d be as liable to throw a monkey wrench into our machinery as into anybody else’s.”
“Then why are you spilling all these beans?”
“Because I was told to do so. It was decided that you should know that there is a galaxy-wide organization behind you—as long as you’re doing the right things. And that if you do the wrong things—there’s a nasty, mercenary streak in your nature—you’d better try to make a get-away to the Magellanic Clouds.”
Grimes got up from his chair and began to pace back and forth. He managed to light his pipe—on the run, as it were—before Su Lin could do it for him.
He said, “I don’t like being manipulated.”
“You haven’t been manipulated all the time,” she told him.
“And this nasty, mercenary streak you accuse me of having. . . .”
“What shipowner doesn’t have one?”
“Some more than others. More than me.”
“So you say.” Her smile robbed the words of offense.
It did more than that, making her look very attractive. And, he knew now, there was no longer that master-servant relationship to deter him from entering into a relationship with her. But would she now renew the offer that she had made when, so far as he then knew, she was no more than a serving girl?
She was still smiling at him, on her feet and facing him. She did not break away when he took her in his arms—but she did not put her own arms about him. She did not turn her lips away from his—but she did not open them.
When the kiss—such as it was—was over she said, “As well as being mercenary, you’re snobbish. You had the offer, your first day here, and you turned it down. And now that you know that there’s no great social gulf yawning between us you think that we’ll fall happily into bed together.”
Now Grimes was really wanting her. He kissed her again, brutally, and, holding her to him, walked her backwards into the bedroom. He threw her on to the couch. She sprawled there, looking up at him. And was that contempt in her expression—or pity?
She said, “When I first met you, you were making the rules. Now I’m making them. You can have me when I’m ready—and not before. Once you’ve proven yourself to be as good a man as Governor Wibberley was. . . .”
“You mean that he and you. . . .”
“Try to get your mind off sex, John. He was a good man, a religious man. A Bible-basher you’d call him—but, unlike so many Christians, he really tried to live according to his faith, to comfort and succor the helpless. Even agnostics such as myself could appreciate him, to say nothing of the mess of Anarchists, Confucianists, Buddhists and the Odd Gods alone know what on this planet. We—the various undergrounds and PAT—hope that you will carry on his work, the restoration of hope and dignity to the refugee peoples, the suppression of Bardon’s rackets. . . .”
“Get off your soap box, Su,” said Grimes tiredly. “I’m here to do a job and I’ll do it to the best of my ability. I’ll expect some pay for my work—after all, I have that nasty, mercenary streak in me—but, if all goes well, I’ll arrange it myself. It won’t cost PAT anything. It won’t cost you anything. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go to bed. By myself.”
“I certainly do not intend otherwise.”
She got up from the bed and walked slowly out of the room.
“Call me at the usual time,” Grimes called after her.