Chapter 20
The next place that they went to was a very dowdy house, one of a terrace, in a poorly lit side street. As they approached it Grimes wondered what sort of entertainment would be offered in such a venue: something unspeakably sordid, he thought.
There was a doorkeeper, a burly man wearing the inevitable frayed denims and the almost as inevitable heavy beard.
“Your contributions, comrades,” he growled, gesturing toward a battered metal bowl on the table before him. There was a clink and rattle of coinage as Sanchez paid for himself and Grimes.
The two men passed through a curtained door into a hall, took seats toward the back. Grimes looked around curiously. The room, he saw, was less than half full. There were both women and men there, some of them obviously Liberians, some New Cantonese, some Negroid, some blondly Nordic. As yet there was nobody on the platform, behind which were draperies of black-and-scarlet bunting, at the end of the room.
Grimes was about to ask what was going on when a tall, heavily bearded man mounted the platform. He was followed by a fat woman, by two other men of average height and, finally, by a girl who was more skinny than slim, whose protuberant front teeth gleamed whitely in her dusky face. She took her seat at a battered upright piano; the others sat behind a long table on which were water bottles, glasses and what looked like (and were) old fashioned microphones.
The thin girl assailed the keyboard of her instrument. The people behind the table stood up. With a shuffling of feet and a subdued scraping of shifted chairs those in the body of the hall stood up. Everybody—excepting Grimes—started losing.
The faith of our fathers lives on in our hearts,
The flame of their courage burns on,
Their banners still fly. let us lift them on high.
In the light of Liberia’s sun . . .
There was more, much more. Grimes hummed along with the rather trite music while he listened to the words. This was a political meeting to which Sanchez had brought him, he decided, a gathering of the Original Anarchists. At last the song was over. Everybody sat down but the big, bearded man on the platform.
“Comrades,” said this person. “Comrades, and honorary comrades . . .” (The New Cantonese? wondered Grimes. The refugees from New Dallas and other devastated worlds? So even the OAP was capable of discrimination . . .)
“Comrades. Honorary comrades. Again there is hope. Again Earth has sent us a Governor, one who may take our part, as Governor Wibberley did, against the tyranny of O’Higgins and Bardon. But I must warn you, all of you, not to place too much faith in him. After all, the man is no more than a common pirate. . . .” (Piracy, thought Grimes, wasn’t exactly a common trade.) “We will support him if and when he confronts O’Higgins and Bardon. We will stand against him when he attempts to re-impose the rule of Imperial Earth.
“But what manner of man is this new Governor, this pirate Commodore Grimes? With whom shall we have to deal when the time comes? What say you, Chiang Sung?”
One of the New Cantonese got to his feet.
“I am only an under-chef at the Residence, Comrade. I have little contact with him. I have seen him, of course. He has inspected the kitchens. He was very affable. He appreciates good food. It will be a pleasure to work for such a gentleman. But Su Lin, his maidservant, can tell you more than I.”
“And where is Su Lin?” demanded the fat woman. “Where is the Pekingese Princess? The airs and graces that she puts on when she’s no more than a governor’s trollop . . . Come to that—where is the Lord High Mandarin Wong Lee? With all due respect to Comrade Chiang Sung, we should exercise far greater discrimination.”
“And where,” demanded one of the smaller men on the platform, “is Captain Raoul Sanchez?” He went on, sneering heavily, “Oh. he came crying to us after that wench of his died and after his brother was murdered—or so he says. But I suppose that now he’s found himself a new girl and, as we know, he’s inherited his brother’s soft job he’ll scrub us.”
Grimes heard Sanchez growl softly and gave him a sharp nudge with his elbow.
He sat through a long and boring speech by the Comrade Chairman. The more he heard the less he was puzzled by the fact that the Liberian authorities tolerated the OAP. Probably many of the men and women at this meeting were government agents. Possibly these same agents, as dues-paying members, made quite heavy contributions to the OAP working expenses. He listened to horror stories from various refugees, men and women in domestic service whose masters and mistresses, according to them, were unduly harsh. Most of such tales left him unmoved. Those servants would not have lasted long in like capacities aboard any spaceship, naval or mercantile. Those who make a practice of insolence, dumb or otherwise, should not be surprised when their employers take counter measures.
The meeting came to a close just as Sanchez was beginning to fidget and snatch ever more frequent glances at his wrist companion. The pianist again battered the long-suffering keyboard. Everybody stood up.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation.
Arise, ye wretched of the world,
For Justice thunders condemnation
And the flag of Hope’s unfurled!
Then comrades come rally
And the last fight let us face.
Fraternity and Liberty
Unite the human race!
“Time we got going, Joachim.” said Sanchez.
They made their way toward the door, accepting handfuls of leaflets as they did so. They were almost out and clear when they were accosted by a large, heavily moustached man.
“New here, comrades?”
“Yes, comrade,” said Sanchez. “We’re up from our plantation. Somebody told us that there was an OAP meeting so we thought we’d look in.”
“Interested, comrades?”
“Yes. We have drifted away from the old ideals.”
“I’d like to send you some more literature, comrades. Put you on our mailing list.”
“We’d be pleased with that,” Sanchez said. He pulled out his notecase, took out a card and gave it to the man. “And now, if you’ll excuse us. We have a date. With two of the girls from the Whorehouse.”
“But you’re contributing to their degradation, comrades.”
“Come off it, comrade. They like their work. Or they will with us—eh, Joachim? Come on, man. We mustn’t keep the ladies waiting.”
As they waited for a trishaw Grimes said. “Raoul, surely you could see that the man was some sort of undercover agent.”
“Of course I did.”
“But you gave him a card . . .” ,
“I didn’t say that it was mine, did I?” He hailed an approaching trishaw. “Come on, Joachim. We mustn’t keep Wong Lee waiting.”