Chapter 7 
Chapter 7
IN THE DAYS that followed, Grimes was busy. The modifications to Rim Malemute—mainly the fitting of weaponry—he left in Williams’ capable hands, concerning himself with setting up some kind of an organization and with reading all the official reports that were made available to him. Pleshoff, he learned, had been very unlucky. In the vast majority of cases those who smoked dreamy weed functioned normally on awakening. He learned, too, that the drug was not one on which one became hooked, although those who had participated in a dream time, as it was called, wished to repeat the experience as soon as possible. But, as far as he could determine, the stuff was no more dangerous than alcohol, and its overall effects were far less damaging. Still, he had been ordered to help stamp out the traffic—and, as Sonya had said, there were far too many utterly unworthy people making far too big profits from it.
For much of the time he was having to work with Billinghurst who, even though Port Forlorn was his own bailiwick, had been put in general charge of the investigation by his Department. Grimes acquired a grudging respect for the man’s capabilities although it was still impossible to like him. Billinghurst, however, insisted on treating Grimes as an old friend. His attitude was, we’re both Lorners. We have to stand together against these Ultimo hicks.
He said, “We’ll not be able to rely too much on the police, Commodore. They’re like all policemen, everywhere. When it comes to dealing with members of the criminal classes they’re quite efficient, but when they tangle with students, or spheres, they go all hysterical.”
“Spheres?” asked Grimes.
“You should study the jargon. They call themselves spheres. They call people like us blocks. We block the spheres from rolling.”
“And just how do the . . . er . . . spheres roll, Mr. Billinghurst?”
“Doing anything tonight, Commodore? There’s a roll around at the Dominey Hall. You and I will have to wear false beards and dress the part; spheres come in all ages and sizes. Young Pahvani—his sister is in your office—will be with us. He’s been growing his own beard so he can play the part of a sphere if necessary. He’ll tell you what to wear, and all the rest of it.”
Grimes changed into his sphere outfit in Pahvani’s room, in the unpretentious hotel in which the young customs officer was living. He surveyed himself rather dubiously in the full-length mirror. Black leather shorts—but that part of it wasn’t so bad, he was used to wearing shorts with uniform. Bare legs—well, at least he maintained a good tan. Ornate, metal-studded sandals, looking like the sort of footwear that Roman legionaries must have worn. A short shirt, worn outside the shorts, basically dark green but liberally decorated with improbable scarlet and orange blossoms. A string of glass beads, each one a different shade of blue, and each one perfectly spherical. And the beard . . . it matched the hair of his head perfectly, but that was all that could be said in its favour. It was not the sort of beard that Grimes would ever have grown. It was too long, too untidy, untrimmed, uncombed.
There was one consolation; Billinghurst, who did not have the build for this sort of rig, looked even worse than Grimes, his spindly legs offensively incongruous under the gross bulk of his body. Sub-Inspector Pahvani looked quite good. His beard suited him. He could have been an old-time Indian mystic.
It was only a short walk from the hotel to the Dominey Hall, which was situated in the Old Town suburb of Port Last, differing from the ancient sheet metal buildings around it only in size. It was a huge barn of a place with no pretentions to architectural style. Projected into the air above it, in huge, shimmering letters of blue fire, were the words:
TONITE! TONITE!
ROLL-AROUND
TONITE!
Already there were crowds converging on the hall—men, of all ages, dressed as Grimes and his companions were dressed; girls and women, shaven-headed, most of them, similarly attired although their shorts were much shorter and many of the shirts were practically transparent.
There were police, too, obvious in their blue and silver uniforms. One of them, when Grimes stopped to stare at the crowd, poked him quite painfully with his club, snarling, “Move along there, you bearded wonder! Move along!” Grimes decided to move along. Billinghurst chuckled and murmured, “You see what I mean about the police force, John.”
“I see, Joe. And I feel it!”
They reached the door, where Pahvani paid the admission for all three of them. There were no seats in the hall. There was a platform in the centre of the floor, as yet unoccupied. The glaring lights overhead were red and green, blue and yellow. The air was hot and already heavy with the odour of perspiring and not overly clean humanity. Many of the women had already removed their shirts and a few of the men had done so.
“What band tonight, Francis?” asked Billinghurst casually.
“The Music of the Spheres, sir.”
“Watch it!” snarled Billinghurst.
“The Music of the Spheres, Joe.”
“Appropriate, I suppose,” commented Grimes. He saw that a circle of flooring in the centre of the platform was sinking, was vanishing from sight. Some sort of elevator, he supposed. It would have been impossible for the bandsmen to struggle to their places through this crowd.
Yes, it was an elevator. It brought up the instrumentalists—three bearded men with electric guitars, three more with small drums, one seated at a piano, and an enormously fat blonde girl who was holding a microphone.
They started almost at once—the guitars snarling, the drums thudding, the piano holding the tune together. The fat girl yelled into the microphone and her voice, vastly amplified, came at them from all corners of the hall.
“Driftin’
“An’ dreamin’,
“No lyin’,
“No schemin’
“Just you, an’ me,
“An’ he, an’ she,
“Just we,
“Ain’t yer gonna drift an’ dream some time with me?”
So it went on, for quite some time. Grimes was not enjoying himself much. He suspected that Billinghurst was not either. But young Pahvani was reveling in the music with its odd, broken rhythm—like an inertial drive unit slightly on the blink, thought Grimes nastily—as were most of the others in the crowd. But the real Roll-Around had not yet started.
When it did there was, at last, some rhythm in the music—unsubtle, compelling. As though stirred by a giant spoon the crowd began to move, clockwise, around the hall, marching in step to the insistent drums, stepping high, bringing feet thudding down on the reverberant floor. It was impossible not to join in, physically as well as psychologically. To the snarling guitars and growling drums they marched, to the amplified bass beat of the flogged piano, to the words that the fat woman was belting out in an almost baritone.
“Rolling free, rolling free!
“Give a shock to the blocks—One, two, three!
“Oh, we’ll roll the bastards under
“And we’ll break them all asunder,
“Rolling free, rolling free, rolling free!”
Grimes was singing as loudly as anybody. So was Pahvani. Billinghurst was merely muttering the words, without enthusiasm.
Round, and round, and round again. Pahvani had got his shirt off somehow. Grimes, sweating profusely, would have liked to have done the same, but in this crush it was impossible. He saw that some of the women had, with fantastic agility, contrived to strip themselves stark naked.
“Over land, over sea, we go rolling, rolling free,
“And we’ll always go rolling along!
“Over hill, over dale, you will see our dusty trail,
“As we always go rolling along.”
Round, and round, and round again. Tramp, stamp, tramp, stamp! Overhead the lights were swinging to the percussive heat of the music.
“An all you blocks stop growlin’,
“Or this is what we’ll do!
“The spheres was made for rollin,
“They’ll roll right over you!”
“I was hoping,” gasped Billinghurst, contriving to whisper and pant simultaneously, “to pick something up here.”
“That one looks quite nice,” suggested Grimes, who had got his second wind. “A bit sweaty, but aren’t we all?”
“No . . . not . . . that! Information.”
“A rolling sphere gathers no moss,” Grimes told him.
Round, and round, and round again. Tramp, tramp, tramp! Stamp, stamp, stamp!
“When the spheres come rolling in,
“When the spheres come rolling in,
“We’re gonna be in that number
“When the spheres come rolling in!”
To Grimes’ right there was a skinny, half-naked, almost-breastless girl who had been edging closer and closer to him with every circuit of the floor. He was beginning to wonder if a pick-up were intended, was trying to work out ways and means of achieving a painless brush-off. She just wasn’t his type. And then he saw that a plump, copiously perspiring young man had joined her in this dance that was more like a march. He heard him whisper to her, “0200 hours at the Fitzroy Crossing. Pass it on!” His message delivered, he vanished into the mass of dancers.
Somehow the skinny girl had inserted herself between Grimes and the almost-exhausted Billinghurst. She was singing softly, in time to the music,
“When the weed comes dropping in,
“When the weed comes dropping in,
“Oh two hundred, Fitzroy Crossing,
“When the weed comes dropping in!”
The music changed, but she went on singing,
“Dreamy free, dreamy free,
“Dreamy weed, dreamy weed, dreamy free . . .”
She made a face at Billinghurst, flashed a smile at Grimes, and wriggled away through the crowd.
Round, and round, and round—but with every circuit edging closer to the exit.
“Oh, we’ll roll, away up yonder!
“Oh, we’ll roll, away up yonder!
“Oh, we’ll roll, away up yonder!
“When they roll away up yonder we’ll he there!”
And Billinghurst, getting his wind back, sang the final, “We’ll be there!” with great emphasis.