To Prime the Pump - A. Bertram Chandler [32]
"That's better," she told him.
Slowly, smoothly, the air car drifted down to a landing in the central courtyard, dropping past flagpoles from which snapped and fluttered heavy standards, past turrets and battlemented walls, down to the gray, rough flagstones. From somewhere came the baying of hounds. Then, as the doors slid open, there was a high, clear trumpet call, a flourish of drums.
"Welcome to Schloss Stolzberg," said the girl gravely.
Chapter 16
"Welcome to Schloss Stolzberg," she said, and suddenly, for no immediately apparent reason, Grimes remembered another girl (and where was she now?) who had told him, "This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard." He could not imagine the Princess Marlene using that expression, no matter how friendly she became. And Castle Stolzberg did not look, could never look like Liberty Hall. If there were no dungeons under the grim (or Grimm, he mentally punned) pile, there should have been.
He got out of his seat, stepped to the ground, then helped the girl down. Her hand was pleasantly warm and smooth in his. She thanked him politely and then turned her head to the car, saying, "We shan't be needing you again. You can put yourself to bed."
A gentle toot from somewhere in the vehicle's interior replied, and it lifted smoothly, flew toward a doorway that had suddenly and silently opened in the rough stone wall.
"My bags . . ." said Grimes.
"They will be taken to your room, John. Surely, by this time, you have come to learn how efficient our servitors are."
"Efficient, yes. But they've given me enough trouble, Marlene."
"They were doing the jobs for which they were designed. But come."
She put her hand in the crook of his left arm, guided him to a tall, arched doorway. The valves were of some dark timber, iron studded, and as they moved on their ponderous hinges they creaked loudly. Grimes permitted himself a smile. So the robots who ran this place weren't so efficient after all. Even a first trip deck boy would have known enough to use an oil can without being told.
Marlene read his expression and smiled in reply, a little maliciously. "The doors should creak," she said. "If they didn't, it would spoil the decor."
"Talking of noises . . . Those rowdy dogs we heard when we landed . . . Also part of the decor, I suppose. And was all that baying a recording?"
"Part of the decor, yes. As for the rest, real hounds in real kennels, I told you that hunting was one of my amusements."
"And where do you keep the vampire bats?"
"You improve with acquaintance, John. But this is not Transylvania."
They were in the main hall now, a huge barn of a place, thought Grimes. But he corrected himself. A barn, when empty, can be a little cheerless; when full its atmosphere is one of utilitarian warmth. This great room was cheerless enough, but far from empty. Only a little daylight stabbed through the high, narrow windows, and the flaring torches and the fire that blazed in the enormous fireplace did little more than cast a multiplicity of confused, flickering shadows. Ranged along the walls were what, at first glance, looked like armoured men standing to rigid attention. But it was not space armour; these suits, if they were genuine (and Grimes felt that they were), had been worn by men of Earth's Middle Ages. By men? By knights and barons and princes, rather; in those days the commonality had gone into battle with only thick leather (if that) as a partial protection. And then had come those equalizers—long bow and crossbow and the first, cumbersome firearms. Grimes wondered if any of this armour had been worn by Marlene's ancestors, and what they would think if they could watch their daughter being squired by a man who, in their day, would have been a humble tiller of the fields or, in battle, a fumbling pikeman fit only to be ridden down by a charge of iron-clad so-called chivalry. Grimes, you're an inverted snob,he told himself. He shivered involuntarily as he thought that he saw one of the dark figures move. But it was only the shifting