The Big Black Mark - A. Bertram Chandler [52]
They left, and Grimes returned to his report writing. He saw no reason why he should try to whitewash Swinton, and regarding the destruction of the second airship told the truth, no more and no less.
Chapter 21
Grimes went down to the farm deck to see Flannery.
He could have sent for the telepath, but did not like to have the man in his quarters. He was always filthy, and around him hung the odors of stale perspiration, cheap whiskey, and organic fertilizers. Possibly this latter smell came from the nutrient solutions pumped into the hydroponic tanks—at times the atmosphere in the farm deck was decidedly ripe—and possibly not.
The PCO, as always, was hunched at his littered table, with the inevitable whiskey bottle and its accompanying dirty glass to hand. He was staring, as he usually was, at the spherical tank in which was suspended the obscenely naked canine brain, which seemed to be pulsating slowly (but surely this was an optical illusion) in the murky life-support fluid. His thick lips were moving as he sang, almost inaudibly, to himself, or to his weird pet.
"Now all you young dukies an' duchesses,
Take warnin' from what I do say;
Be sure that you owns what you touchesses.
Or ye'll jine us in Botany Bay!"
"Mphm!" Grimes grunted loudly.
Flannery looked up, turned slowly around in his chair.
"Oh, it's you, Captain Bligh. Sorry, me tongue slipped. Me an' Ned was back in the ould days, when the bully boys, in their pretty uniforms, was ridin' high an' roughshod. An' what can I be doin' for ye, Captain?"
"What were you getting at when you called me Captain Bligh?" demanded Grimes.
"Not what ye were thinkin'. Yer officers an' crew haven't decided to put ye in the long boat, with a few loyalists an' the ship's cat . . . yet. Not that we have a cat. But ye're not loved, that's for sure. An' that murtherin' major's gettin' sympathy he's not deservin' of. Ned has him taped, all right. He doesn't like him at all, at all. He can remember the really bad bastards who were officers in the ould New South Wales Corps, floggin' the poor sufferin' convicts with nary a scrap o' provocation, an' huntin' down the black fellows like animals."
"I still don't believe that dingo of yours had a racial memory," said Grimes.
"Suit yerself, Captain. Suit yerself. But he has. An' he has a soft spot for ye, believe it or not, even though he thinks o' ye as a latter-day Bligh. Even—or because. He remembers that it was Bligh who stood up for the convicts against the sodgers when he was governor o' New South Wales. After all, that was what the Rum Rebellion was all about."
"You're rather simplifying," said Grimes.
"No more than the descendants o' those New South Wales Corps officers who've been blackenin' Bligh's memory to try to make their own crummy forebears look like plaster saints by comparison." His voice faded, and then again he started to sing softly.
"Singin' tooral-i-ooral-i-addy,
Singin' tooral-i-ooral-i-ay,
Singin' tooral-i-ooral-i-addy,
An' we're bound out for Botany Bay. . . ."
"I didn't come down here for a concert," remarked Grimes caustically.
Flannery raised a pudgy, admonitory hand. "Hould yer whist, Captain. That song niver came from me. It came from outside."
"Outside?"
"Ye heard me. Quiet now. T'is from far away . . . but I could be there, where iver there is. They're a-sittin' around a fire an' a-singin', an' a-suppin' from their jars. T'is a right ould time they're after havin'. They're a-sendin' . . . oh, they're transmittin', if it's the technicalities ye want, but they're like all o' ye half-wits—beggin' your pardon, Captain, but that's what we call ye—ye can transmit after a fashion, but ye can't receive. I'm tryin' to get through to someone, anyone, but it's like tryin' to penetrate a brick wall."
"Mphm."
"Tie me kangaroo down, sport, tie me kangaroo down. . . ."
"Must you try to sing, Mr. Flannery?"
"I was only jinin' in, like. T'is a good party, an' Ned an' me wishes we was there."
"But where is it?"
"Now ye're askin'. There should be a bonus for