Chapter 18
Grimes returned to the Residence.
Sanchez was waiting for him in the portico.
He said, as soon as Grimes was out of the car, “I’ve taken her out, Your Excellency . . .”
Grimes wondered who she was.
“She handles quite well . . .”
“Oh. Fat Susie.”
“Of course. What did you think I meant, sir?”
“Come with me to my office and tell me about it.” Then, to the ADC, “I’ll not be requiring you any more today, Lieutenant Smith.”
“Very good, Your Excellency.”
As soon as Grimes and the pilot were seated Su Lin materialized with a tea tray.
“Are you switched on?” Grimes asked the girl. He realized, too late, that this would be rather a foolish question, one that would cause the snoopers to wonder, to add two and two to make at least five, if she were not.
But she was.
Grimes said, “I want to wander around the city incognito. To see for myself without having to peer through a thick screen of officials, politicians and hangers on.”
“Like that Caliph of Baghdad,” said Raoul. “Haroun al Raschid or whatever his name was.”
“Yes.”
“Governor Wibberley used to do it,” said Su Lin. “I would help him with his disguise. A denim suit, false whiskers. A voice modulator. . . .”
“But how did he—how do I—get out of this place unobserved?”
“Wong Lee has a car,” she said. “It’s a van, rather, with the back enclosed. He runs into the city now and again, in the evening. He goes to the Golden Lotus Club. This is one of his recreational nights.”
“And mine,” said Grimes, suddenly making up his mind. “Su, could you disguise me? Is there a denim suit that would fit? Can you still lay your hands on the other things?”
“Of course.”
“And would you come with me, Raoul?”
“It will be my pleasure, sir.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
He went through to his bedroom and got out of his informal suit. When he was down to his underwear Su Lin came back with a bundle of clothing and other things. She unnecessarily helped him on with the floppy-collared white shirt and the scarlet neckerchief, the blue denim suit, the black, calf-length boots. There was a full-length mirror in the wardrobe door and Grimes admired himself in it. He rather liked this rig—but he was still him.
The girl told him to sit in a chair, went behind him to carry on the work of disguise. He felt the sticky coldness as some adhesive was dabbed on to his skull behind his ears and then her hands as she firmly pressed the prominent appendages to the fast-setting gum. She came around to stand in front of him and looked down at him.
She said, “That’s better. Now, open your mouth, please . . .”
He obeyed.
Her deft fingers inserted a pad, a tiny cushion covered in slick plastic, into each side of his mouth, under each cheek. He was, of course, aware of their presence although they were not uncomfortable.
“Now look at yourself,” she told him.
He got up from the chair and did so. He stared at the chubby-faced stranger who stared back at him from the mirror.
He asked, “Don’t I get a moustache?”
His voice was as strange as his appearance, high, squeaky almost. He could see his expression of surprise.
She told him, “The voice modulator is incorporated in one of the cheek pads. The way you look and the way you sound nobody will recognize you.”
“Perhaps. But just about everybody on this world has face fungus of some kind.”
“All right.” She went back to the things that she had laid out on the bed and selected something that looked, at first glance, like a large, hairy insect. “This is self-adhesive,” she told him. “You’ll need a special spray, of course, to get it off.”
Grimes looked at himself again.
That heavy moustache suited him, he thought. It was a great pity that his modulated voice did not go with his macho appearance. He supposed, ruefully, that he couldn’t have everything.
He took the broad-brimmed black hat, with its scarlet ribbon, that the girl handed him, went through to the sitting room. Sanchez got up from the chair in which he had been sitting when Grimes entered. At first Grimes did not recognize him; the tuft of false beard on his chin was an effective disguise.
Sanchez asked, “Ready, Joachim?”
“Joachim?”
“You have to have a name.”
“Joachim, then,” agreed Grimes. “I rather like it.” He patted his empty pockets. “What do I use for money?”
Su Lin handed him a well-worn notecase and a small handful of silver and copper coins.
She said, “At first you’d better let Raoul do the paying, until you get the feel of the local currency.”
“That shouldn’t be long,” Grimes told her. “As a spaceman I’m used to paying for things, on all sorts of worlds, in all sorts of odd coins and pieces of paper or whatever. And now, as soon as I’ve found my pipe and tobacco, I’ll be ready to go.”
“You will not smoke a pipe, Joachim,” said Su Lin severely.
“I’ve seen people smoking pipes in Libertad.”
“And everybody knows that you smoke one. There were cartoons in the newspapers when your appointment was first announced; in every one of them you had a pipe stuck in your face. Pipe and ears—those are your trademarks.”
“Mphm.”
“Here’s a packet of cigars, and a lighter. And now, if both of you will follow me, I’ll take you to the truck.”
Grimes thought that he had already acquired a fair knowledge of the geography of the Residence; he soon discovered that he had not. There was a door that he had thought was just part of the paneling in the corridor; beyond this was a corridor of the kind that, aboard a ship, would be called a working alleyway. There was a tradesman’s entrance. Beyond this was the rather shabby van, in the driver’s seat of which the old majordomo was sitting. Wong Lee was not wearing his livery but was looking very dignified in a high-collared suit of black silk, a round black hat of the same material on his head. He ignored Grimes and Sanchez as they clambered into the rear of the vehicle. The door shut automatically as soon as they were aboard. There was a roll of cloth of some kind on which they made themselves comfortable. The only light came from ventilation slits and that—it was all of half an hour after sunset—was fading fast.
The van started, so smoothly that the passengers were hardly aware of the motion. Raoul offered Grimes a long, thin cigar from his pack, took one himself. The two men smoked in companionable silence, broken eventually by the pilot.
He said, “Wong Lee’s letting us off on the corner of May Day Street and Tolstoy Avenue. On the outskirts of the city. From there it’ll be easy to get a trishaw. He’ll pick us up on the same comer at 0100 tomorrow.”
“And how do we fill in the time until then?” asked Grimes.
“Easily, Joachim. I’ll try to give you an idea of the way in which the refugees are exploited here. We’ll do a tour of the pleasure district.”
“Combining business with pleasure, as it were,” said Grimes.
“You can put it that way,” said Raoul coldly, very coldly.
Grimes remembered, then, what he had been told when the pilot’s shuttle craft brought him down from the orbiting Sobraon to Port Libertad, about the New Dallas girl called Mary Lou who had been one of the entertainers in the Pink Pussy Cat.
He said, inadequately. “I’m sorry, Raoul.”
“There’s no need to be, Joachim. I know that you’re not the sort of man who’ll get much pleasure from what we’re going to see. You’re no Holy Joe—as Wibberley was—but you have your principles.”
“You hope,” said Grimes, adding softly, “and I hope.”
The van stopped.
The rear door opened on to a warm darkness that was enhanced rather than dispelled by the sparsely spaced, yellow streetlamps.
Grimes and Sanchez got out.
Without a word to them Wong Lee drove away.