Grimes' parents were waiting in the lounge at the base of the mooring mast. His mother embraced him, his father took his hand and grasped it warmly between both of his. Then Grimes introduced the two girls. He realized that he could not remember which one had been given Kelly as a surname and which one was Byrne. Why the hell, he asked himself, couldn't Damien have had them entered in the books as sisters? As twin sisters, even. They looked enough alike. (Some little time later he raised this point with the two New Alicians. "But the admiral is very thorough, John," Darleen told him. "To put us down as being related would have made nonsense of his files. It was explained to us. It is all a matter of blood groups and such . . . .")
The older people did, as a matter of fact, look rather puzzled when Shirl and Darleen were introduced. But they asked no questions and, in any case, the Grimes household was one in which the use of given names was the rule rather than the exception.
Baggage was collected and then the party boarded the family hovercar. Grimes senior took the road in a direction away from the city, deviated from this on to what was little more than a rough track, heading toward what the old man called his private oasis. By now it was quite dark and overhead the black sky was ablaze with stars. In the spreading beam of the headlights green eyes gleamed with reflected radiance from the low brush on either side of the track. For a while an old man kangaroo bounded ahead of the vehicle until, at last, it collected its wits and broke away to the right, out of the path of the car.
The lights came on in the house as the hovercar approached. His father was still doing well, thought the spaceman, could still afford all the latest in robotic home help. The wide drive, dull-gleaming permaplast bordered with ornamental shrubs, had been swept clear of the dust that here, in the Red Center, got everywhere. Ahead, the wide door of the big garage slid up and open. The old man reduced speed at the very last moment and slid smoothly into the brilliantly lit interior. Gently sighing, the vehicle subsided in its skirts.
Grimes senior was first out of the car. Gallantly he assisted the ladies to alight—not that any of them needed his aid—leaving his son to cope with the baggage. A door slid open in one of the side walls. In it stood a woman—a transparent woman? No, not a woman. A robot in human female form, with what appeared to be delicate, beautifully fashioned, gleaming clockwork innards, some of the fragile-seeming wheels spinning rapidly, others with a barely perceptible movement.
"Come in," said this obviously hellishly expensive automaton. "This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard."
"Cor stiffen the bleeding crows!" said Grimes.
Matilda Grimes laughed without much humour. "Just one of George's latest toys," she said. "It came programmed with a standard vocabulary but he added to it."
"Too right," said the robot in a pleasant contralto.
"I like her," maintained George Whitley Grimes.
"You would," his wife told him.
Meanwhile it—she?—advanced on Grimes, arms extended. What was he supposed to do? he wondered. Shake hands? Throw his own arms about the thing in a step-brotherly embrace?
"Let her have the bags, John," said his father.
It took them from him, managing them with contemptuous ease, led the way into the house. The workings of the machinery in her hips and legs was fascinatingly obvious. It was like, in a way, one of those beautiful antique clocks that spend their working lives in glass domes. And what would it be like, he wondered, to make love to an eight day clock? Down, boy, down! he snarled mentally at his, at times kinky, libido.
They sat in the big, comfortable lounge, Shirl and Darleen in very deep armchairs that caused them to make a display of their long, long legs. Grimes noticed that his father's eyes kept straying toward the two New Alicians. Perhaps, he thought, it was no more than biological curiosity. Those amply displayed lower limbs were not quite human. Or perhaps the old man was betraying another sort of biological interest. Grimes could not blame him. Like son, like father . . . .
"Shirl," asked Matilda Grimes sweetly. "Darleen . . . Aren't you chilly? Wouldn't you like to put on something warmer?"
"It is quite all right, Matilda," said Shirl. "We often wear less than this. John can tell you . . . ."
His mother looked at him coldly and said, "You never change much, do you? I remember when you were only twelve, when we were living in that old house in Flynn Street, and you appointed yourself secretary of the Flynn Street Nudist Club which held its meetings by the pool in our backyard . . . As I recall it, you were the only male member."
"And I had to shift my workroom to the front of the house," said George Whitley Grimes. "The view from the back windows was too distracting."
"And I," said Matilda, "had to cope with an irate committee of local mothers who had discovered how their little bitches of daughters were spending their afternoons . . . "
"And I," said George, "had to stay away from the pub for fear of being beaten up by the fathers of those same little bitches."
Shirl and Darleen laughed.
"You Earthpeople, as we are discovering, have such odd ways of looking at things," said one of them.
"Not all of us," said Grimes senior. "And not any of us for all of the time."
The robutler rolled in with the pre-dinner drinks. It was an even bigger and more elaborate model than the one that had been in service at the time of Grimes's last visit to the parental home, reminding him of a suit of mechanized battle armor built to accommodate at least three Federation Marines simultaneously. With it came the house robot that Grimes was now thinking of as Clockwork Kitty. Like its predecessor the robutler took spoken orders and, in its capacious interior, seemed to hold a stock of every alcoholic drink known to civilized Man—and, quite possibly, a few that weren't. There were ice cubes, spa water and fruit cordials. There was a fine selection of little eats.
As the various orders were extruded on trays they were deftly removed by Clockwork Kitty and handed to the correct recipients. Bowls of nuts and dishes of tiny savories were placed on convenient low tables.
George Whitley Grimes raised his condensation-misted glass of beer to his son and said, "Here's to crime!"
The two girls, who also were drinking beer, raised their glasses. Grimes raised his glass of pink gin. Matilda Grimes set her sherry down firmly on the table.
"That," she stated, "is a dangerous toast to be drinking in the presence of this son of mine. I still have not forgotten that court of inquiry into the piracy with which he was involved. We have yet to hear, from his lips, the full story of what happened when he was Governor of Liberia—but I have little doubt that there were more than a few illegalities . . . ."
"Not committed by me, Matilda," Grimes told her. "Don't forget that I was the Law, trying to put a stop to other people's illegal profits."
"Hah!" his mother snorted. "Oh, well, you weren't impeached. I suppose that we must thank the Odd Gods of the Galaxy for small mercies. But we have yet to hear about what really happened on New Sparta . . . ."
"You shall, my dear, you shall." He laughed. "Oh, I was guilty of one crime. I did 'borrow' a Survey Service courier . . . ."
"And you crashed it," said Darleen a little maliciously.
"It was the fault of the weather," said Grimes.
Matilda laughed. "All right, all right. And I suppose that you still hold that reserve commission in the Survey Service that's supposed to be such a secret and get sent hither and yon to do that man Damien's dirty work for him." She looked long and hard at Shirl and Darleen. "And am I right in assuming that the pair of you are also members of the good admiral's department of dirty tricks?"
The girls looked inquiringly at Grimes. He decided that he had better answer for them.
"If you must know—but keep it strictly to yourself—Shirl and Darleen are both probationary ensigns in the Service."
"And what is their specialty?" asked Matilda.
"Unarmed combat," Grimes told her. "Or combat with anything handy, and preferably sharp, that can be flung. Such as . . . "
Shirl picked up a shallow, round dish that was now empty. She turned it over so that its convexity was on the down side. With a sharp flick of her wrist she threw it from her. It circled the room, returned to her waiting hand.
"Flying saucers yet!" said Grimes's father.
After a second drink they went in to the dinner that was served by the efficient Clockwork Kitty. With the first course there was some slight embarrassment. It was Grimes's fault, of course. (But just about everything was.) He should have told his mother that the ancestors of the New Alicians had been kangaroos. Even though these people were now classed as human and, like true humans descended from the original killer ape, omnivorous, they refused kangaroo tail soup, once they learned what it was. But they had strong stomachs and enjoyed the excellent crown roast of lamb once they had been assured that it was of ovine origin.
Grimes himself managed a good dinner despite the fact that he was talking most of the time. He had not been able to visit his parents on the first occasion of his return to Earth from Liberia, via New Sparta. A very thorough debriefing had occupied practically all of his time. So now there were questions to be answered, stories to be told. He was still answering questions and telling stories when the party returned to the lounge for coffee and brandy. Grimes and his father smoked their pipes, Matilda cigarillo and Shirl and Darleen—they were picking up bad habits—cigarettes in long, elegant, bejeweled holders.
Finally Darleen seemed to be having trouble stifling a yawn. It was infectious. George said, "I don't know about you people, but I'm turning in." Darleen said, "If you do not mind, Matilda, we shall do so too."
Matilda grinned. "Not with my old man, you won't! The maid will show you to your rooms."
Clockwork Kitty led them away, leaving Grimes alone with his mother.
She smiled at him a little sadly. She said, "I need hardly ask you, John, need I? But, just to satisfy my curiosity, which one is it?"
Grimes was frank.
"Both of them," he said.
"What! Not both at once?"
As a matter of fact this had been known but Grimes' mother was, in some ways, rather prudish. And, apart from anything else, there was the matter of miscegenation. The old prejudice against the underpeople still lingered.
"Shirl," lied Grimes.
"I really don't know how you can tell one from the other. Well, John, you're a big boy now, a four ring captain and a shipowner, and you've been a planetary governor . . . And commodore of a pirate squadron," she added maliciously. "You're old enough and wicked enough to look after yourself. And the girls' rooms are next to yours in the west wing.
"But I do wish that you would find some nice, human girl and settle down. Isn't it time?"
"I'll get around to it eventually," he promised her.
He kissed her good night then made his way to his quarters. The double bed, he saw, was already occupied. By Shirl.
And Darleen.