The Rim Gods Read online

  "Did they, now? And what would those tarry-breeked ruffians of whom you're so fond have thought of a captain calling himself 'Rector'?"

  "In the early days of sail they'd have thought nothing of it. It was the master's usual title."

  "I doubt if anybody'll ever call you 'Bishop,' " remarked the Admiral. "Anyhow, you'll be aboard primarily to observe. And to report. In the unlikely event of anything occurring that will affect Rim Worlds' security you are to take action."

  "Me—and what squad of Marines?"

  "We could send a detachment of the Salvation Army with you," joked the Admiral.

  "I doubt that they'd be allowed on board. As far as I can gather, these Neo-Calvinists are somewhat intolerant. Only on a world as tolerant as Francisco would they have been allowed to flourish."

  "Intolerant, yes," agreed Kravitz. "But scrupulously honest. And moral."

  "In short." said Grimes, "no redeeming vices."

  "Piety lifts ship at 1800 hours tomorrow, Commodore Grimes," said the Admiral. "You will be aboard."

  "Aye, aye, sir," replied Grimes resignedly.

  * * *

  Grimes had never enjoyed serving in a "taut ship" himself, and had never commanded one. Nonetheless, he respected those captains who were able to engender about themselves such a state of affairs. Piety, as was obvious from the moment that he set foot on the bottom of the ramp, was a taut ship. Everything was spotless. Every metal fitting and surface that was supposed to be polished boasted a mirror-like sheen. All the paintwork looked as though it was washed at least twice daily—which, in fact, it was. The atmosphere inside the hull bore none of the usual taints of cookery, tobacco smoke or—even though there was a mixed crew—women's perfume. But it was too chilly, and the acridity of some disinfectant made Grimes sneeze.

  The junior officer who met him at the head of the ramp showed him into the elevator cage at the foot of the axial shaft. Grimes thanked him and assured the presumably young man—the full beard made it hard to determine his age—that he knew his way around this class of vessel. A captain, no matter what he calls himself or is called, is always accommodated as closely as possible to the center of control. The elevator worked smoothly, noiselessly, carrying the Commodore speedily up to the deck just below the control room. There, as in his own Faraway Quest, was the semi-circular suite of cabins. Over the door was a brass plate with the title RECTOR.

  As Grimes approached this entrance it slid open. Smith stood there and said formally, "Welcome aboard, Commodore."

  "Thank you, Rector."

  "Will you come in, sir?"

  There were other people in the day cabin: a tall, stout, white-headed and bearded man dressed in clothing that was very similar to Smith's uniform; a woman in a longsleeved, high-necked, ankle-length black dress, her hair completely covered by a frilly white cap. They looked at Grimes, obviously disapproving of his gold-braided, brass-buttoned, beribboned finery. They did not get up.

  "Commodore Grimes," said Smith. "Presbyter Cannan. Sister Lane."

  Reluctantly the Presbyter extended his hand. Grimes took it. He was not surprised that it was cold. Sister Lane nodded slightly in his general direction.

  Smith gestured stiffly toward a chair, sat down himself. Grimes lowered himself to his own seat incautiously. He should have known that it would be hard. He looked curiously at the two civilians. The Presbyter was an old edition of Rector Smith. The sister. . . ? She had him puzzled. She belonged to a type that been common enough on Francisco when he had been there—the Blossom People, they had called themselves. They preached and practiced a sort of hedonistic Zen, and claimed that their use of the wide range of drugs available to them put them in close communication with the Cosmic All. Prim she was, this Sister Lane, prim and proper in her form-concealing black, but the planes of her face were not harsh, and her unpainted lips were full, and there was a strange gentleness in her brown eyes. Properly dressed—or undressed—thought Grimes, she would be a very attractive woman. Suddenly it was important that he hear her voice.

  He pulled his battered pipe out of his pocket, his tobacco pouch and lighter. He asked, addressing her, "Do you mind if I smoke?"

  But it was the Presbyter who replied. "Certainly we mind, sir. As you should know, we are opposed to the use of any and all drugs."

  "All drugs?" murmured the woman, with a sort of malicious sweetness. Her voice was almost a baritone, but it could never be mistaken for a male one.

  "There are exceptions, Sister Lane," the old man told her harshly. "As you well know."

  "As I well know," she concurred.

  "I take it," said Grimes, "that nicotine is not among those exceptions."

  "Unfortunately," she stated, "no."

  "You may leave us, Sister," said Presbyter Cannan. "We have no further business to discuss with you."

  "Thank you, sir." She got gracefully to her feet, made a curtsey to Cannan, walked out of the door. Her ugly clothing could not hide the fluid grace of her movements.

  "Your Nursing Sister, Rector?" asked Grimes when she was gone.

  "No," answered Cannan. And, Who's running this ship? thought Grimes irritably. But evidently the Presbyter piled on more gravs than did the ship's lawful master.

  Smith must have noticed the Commodore's expression. "Sister Lane, sir," he explained, "is a member of the Presbyter's staff, not of mine."

  "Thank you, Rector." Grimes rewarded him with what was intended to be a friendly smile. "I'm afraid that it will take me some time to get your ranks and ratings sorted out."

  "I have no doubt," said Cannan, "that it must be confusing to one who relies upon gaudy fripperies for his authority rather than inner grace."

  "Your baggage must be aboard and stowed by now, Commodore," Smith said hastily. He turned to his spiritual superior. "May I suggest, sir, that you and your people retire to your quarters? Liftoff"—he glanced at his watch—"will be in fifteen minutes."

  "Very well, Rector." The old man got up, towering over the two spacemen. Smith got up. Grimes remained seated until Smith returned from seeing the Presbyter out.

  He said, "I'd better be getting below myself. If you could have somebody show me to my stateroom, Rector."

  "I was hoping, Commodore, that you would be coming up to Control for the lift-off."

  "Thank you, Rector Smith. It will be my pleasure."

  Smith led the way out of his quarters, up the short ladder that brought the two men to the control room. Grimes looked about him. The layout was a standard one: acceleration chairs before which were banks of instruments, screens, meters, chart tank, mass proximity indicator, Carlotti Beacon direction finder. All seemed to be in perfect order, and much of the equipment was new. Evidently the Skarsten Theological Institute did not believe in spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar.

  The Rector indicated a chair, into which Grimes strapped himself, then took his own seat. The officers were already at their stations. All those bearded men, thought the Commodore, looked too much alike, and their black-on-black insignia of rank made it hard to tell who was what. But this wasn't his ship, and she had managed to come all the way out from Francisco without mishap.

  The departure routine went smoothly enough, with the usual messages exchanged between control room and spaceport control tower. The Inertial Drive started up, and there was that brief second of weightlessness before the gentle acceleration made itself felt. The ship lifted easily, falling upward to the cloud ceiling. Briefly Grimes was able to look out through the viewports at Port Forlorn and at the dreary countryside spread out around the city like a map. And then there was nothing but gray mist outside—mist that suddenly became a pearly, luminescent white and then vanished. Overhead was a steely sun glaring out of a black sky, its light harsh even though the ports were polarized.

  There was free fall for a little while, and then the gyroscopes swung the ship's head to the target star. The Inertial Drive came on again, its irregular throbbing beat a bass background for the thin, high keenin
g of the Mannschenn Drive. Ahead, save for the iridescent spiral that was the target sun, there was only blackness. Lorn was to starboard—a vast, writhing planetary amoeba that was falling astern, that was shrinking rapidly. And out to port was the Galactic Lens, distorted by the temporal precession field of the Drive to a Klein flask blown by a drunken glass-blower.

  Grimes wondered, as he had wondered before, if anybody would ever come up with another simile. But this one was so apt.

  * * *

  Grimes didn't like this ship.

  She was beautifully kept, efficiently run, and with her cargo spaces converted to passenger accommodation she comfortably housed her crew and all the personnel from the Skarsten Institute. But she was . . . cold. She was cold, and she was too quiet. There was none of the often ribald laughter, none of the snatches of light music that lent warmth to the atmosphere of a normal vessel. There were, he noted, playmasters in all the recreation rooms; but when he examined the spools of the machine in the senior officers' mess he found that they consisted entirely of recordings of sermons and the gloomier hymns. The library was as bad. And, socially, there was complete segregation of the sexes. Deaconesses and sisters were berthed aft, and between them and the male crew and passengers were the storerooms and the "farm."

  The food was not bad, but it was plain, unimaginative. And there was nothing to drink but water, and even that had a flat taste. The conversation at table was as boring as the provender. Too, Grimes was annoyed to find out that the Rector did not sit at the head of the board in the senior officers' mess; that place of honor was reserved for the Presbyter. And he talked, almost non-stop, about the Institute's internal politics, with the ship's captain interjecting an occasional quiet affirmative as required. The chief officer, surgeon and purser gobbled their meals in silence, as did Grimes, very much the outsider at the foot of the table. They were served by a young stewardess who would have been pretty in anything but that ugly, all-concealing black, who seemed to hold the domineering old man—but nobody else—in awe.

  After the evening meal Grimes made his excuses and retired to his cabin. It was little more than a dogbox, and was a comedown after his suite aboard the Quest. He was pleased that he had brought his own reading matter with him, and pleased that he had exercised the forethought to make provision for his other little comforts. Before doing anything else, he filled and lit his pipe and then, moving slowly and easily through the blue haze of his own creation, unclipped the larger of his cases from its rack, pulled it out and opened it. He was lifting out the shirts that had acted as shock-proof packing for certain breakables when he heard a light tap at his door. He groaned. A passenger is bound by ship's regulations as much as is any crew member. But he was damned if he was going to put out his pipe. "Come in," he called.

  She came in. She pulled the ugly white cap off her lustrous brown hair, tossed it on to the bunk. Then she turned back to the door, snapped on the spring lock. She tested its security, smiled, then flopped down into the one chair that the cabin possessed.

  Grimes looked at her, with raised eyebrows. "Yes, Sister Lane?" he asked.

  "Got a smoke, spaceman?" she growled.

  "There are some cigars . . ."he began doubtfully.

  "I didn't expect pot. Although if you have any . . . ?"

  "I haven't." Then Grimes said virtuously, "In any case, such drugs are banned on the Rim Worlds."

  "Are they? But what about the cigar you promised me?"

  Grimes got a box of panatellas out of his case, opened it, offered it to her. She took one, accepted his proffered light. She inhaled luxuriously. She said, "All I need now is a drink."

  "I can supply that."

  "Good on you, Admiral!"

  There was the bottle of absolute alcohol, and there was the case with its ranked phials of essences. "Scotch?" asked Grimes. "Rum? Brandy? Or . . . ?"

  "Scotch will do."

  The Commodore measured alcohol into the two glasses over the washbasin, added to each a drop of essence, topped up with cold water from the tap. She murmured, "Here's mud in your eye," and gulped from hers as soon as he handed it to her.

  "Sister Lane," said Grimes doubtfully.

  "You can call me Clarisse."

  "Clarisse. . . . Should you be doing this?"

  "Don't tell me that you're a wowser, like all those Bible-punchers."

  "I'm not. But this is not my ship. . . ."

  "And it's not mine, either."

  "Then what are you doing here?"

  "It's a long story, dearie. And if you ply me with liquor, I might just tell it to you." She sighed and stretched. "You've no idea what a relief it is to enjoy a drink and a talk and a smoke with somebody who's more or less human."

  "Thank you," said Grimes stiffly.

  She laughed. "Don't be offended, duckie." She put up her hands, pulled her hair back and away from her face. "Look at my ears."

  Grimes looked. They were normal enough organs—save for the fact that were pointed, and were tufted with hair at the tips.

  "I'm only more or less human myself," she told him. "More rather than less, perhaps. You know about the man Raul, the caveman, the Stone Age savage, who was pulled, somehow, from the remote past on Kinsolving's Planet to what was then the present. He was my great-grandfather."

  "He was humanoid," said Grimes. "Not human."

  "Human-schuman!" she mocked. "There is such a thing as parallel evolution, you know. And old Raul was made something of a pet by the scientists back on Earth, and when he evinced the desire to father a family the finest genetic engineers in the Galaxy were pressed into service. No, not the way that you're thinking. Commodore. You've got a low mind."

  "Sorry."

  "I should think so. Just for that, you can pour me another drink."

  And Grimes asked himself if his liquor ration would last out until his return to Lorn.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked bluntly. "In this ship?"

  "At this very moment I'm breaking at least ninety-nine percent of the regulations laid down by the Presbyter and enforced by the Rector. But I know what you mean." Her voice deepened so that it was like Grimes's own. "What is a nasty girl like you doing in a nice place like this?"

  "I wouldn't call you nasty," said Grimes.

  "Thank you, sir. Then stand by for the story of my life, complete and unexpurgated. I'll start off with dear old great-granddaddy, the Noble Savage: He was an artist, you know, in his proper place and time, one of those specialists who practiced a form of sympathetic magic. He would paint or draw pictures of various animals, and the actual beasts would be drawn to the spot, there to be slaughtered by the hunters. He said that it worked, too. I can remember, when I was a little girl, that he'd put on demonstrations. He'd draw a picture of, say, the cat—and within seconds pussy would be in the room. Oh, yes—and he was a telepath, a very powerful transceiver.

  "After many years on Earth, where he was latterly an instructor at the Rhine Institute, he emigrated, with his wife and children, to Francisco, where he was psionic radio officer in charge of the Port Diego Signal Station. It was there that he got religion. And with all the religions to choose from, he had to become a Neo-Calvinist! His family was converted with him—and I often wonder how much part his undeniable psychic powers played in their conversion! And the wives of his sons had to become converts, and the husbands of his daughters—yea, even unto the third and fourth generations."

  She grinned. "One member of the fourth generation kicked over the traces. Me. From the Neo-Calvinists to the Blossom People was a logical step. Like most new converts I overdid things. Drinks, drugs, promiscuity—the works. The Neo-Calvinists picked me up, literally, from the gutter and nursed me back to health in their sanatorium—and, at the same time, made it quite clear that if I was predestined to go to Hell I should go there. And then, when they checked up on great-grandfather's autobiographical papers, they realized that I was predestined for something really important—especially since I, alone of his descendants
, possess something of his powers."

  "You mean that you can . . . ?"

  There was a violent knocking on the door, and a voice shouting, "Open up! Open up, I say!"

  "They know I'm here," muttered Clarisse sullenly. She got out of her chair, operated the sliding panel herself.

  Rector Smith was standing outside, and with him was a tall, gaunt woman. She stared at Sister Lane in horror and snarled, "Cover your nakedness, you shameless hussy!"

  Clarisse shrugged, picked up the ugly cap from where it was lying on the bunk, adjusted it over her hair, tucking all loose strands out of sight.

  "Will you deal with Sister Lane, Deaconess?" asked Smith.

  "That I shall, Rector."

  "Miss Lane and I were merely enjoying a friendly talk," said Grimes.