Below the ridge there was patch of newly turned soil-- the cold, wormy grave of the Spaceman. The Kraalheer Vikter Fontein shuddered and superstitiously refused to look at the last resting place of the old Mandarin, Han Soo. In the highlands it was black death and ill fortune to look upon a new grave. The Fontein shuddered, looked at the blank sky, and marched on, thinking that the bargain which had seemed so fine that late night in Voersterstaad seemed a great deal less so here and now in the valley of Einsamtal under the Shieldwall.
31. ABOARD THE GLORY
What daunted the downworlders overtaking Glory was her vast size. The sled approached the Goldenwing cautiously, as though it were fearful its filial relation to the ship might be forgotten and its tiny existence snapped up and snuffed out by its glorious, diamantine mother. The visitors were made speechless by the dimensions of mast, spar, and rig. Even their sense of distance and proportion was challenged as they approached Glory, At five hundred kilometers she was large and seemed nearby. At one hundred, she dominated the sky. At fifty, her furled wings umbrellaed Voerster. She was not only the most beautiful artifact Eliana and the others from below had ever seen, she was the most commanding.
Amaya carefully piloted the sled toward the hatch of hold 11. The sensation was one of entering a cathedral in space. The carapace remained open. Duncan guessed-- since it was a choice always left to the sled pilot--that the Sailing Master had left it so to awe the Voertrekker passengers. She succeeded.
Eliana held Broni against her breast. The girl trembled. Buele and the old astronomer turned faces upward and outward, astonished by the patterned intricacies of the iridescent monofilament rig. It carried light, and it divided the cosmos into uncountable segments, as though some prodigious god were intent on apportioning a mystic judgment. Black Clavius smiled and feasted his eyes on a sight he had not seen for many long downworld years. Glory was more beautiful, even, than Nepenthe, he thought.
The sled moved into the cavernous interior of hold 11. A high overhead gradually hid Voerster and the stars. Broni said in a faint whisper, “Mynheera, Voertrekkerhoem and the Kongresshalle could fit inside this place.”
The distant fabric walls and overhead were pierced by myriad ports and skylights. Through some could be seen the silvery glare of Planet Voerster, through others only the rig, the sky, the stars, and the Six Giants.
Even Buele was subdued. He murmured to Osbertus that not only would the Kongresshalle and Voertrekkhoem, as Broni said, fit inside this one empty hold, “But everything between the Kongresshalle and the shores of Amity Bay, as well. Have you ever seen anything so empty, Brother Osbertus? It must be kilometers from end to end. Whatever could they have carried in such spaces?”
Duncan withdrew his attention from the control displays and said to Buele, “She carried people in cold-sleep, Buele. On her first voyage she transported ten thousand colonists from Earth to Aldrin.”
Buele was starry-eyed. “She carried a world, Brother Duncan?”
“Yes. But only once. On Aldrin, her syndicate took possession of her.”
“And she has been in the sky ever since then?”
“Deep space is her home.” Duncan glanced at Eliana again. She was watching him with an unreadable expression in her dark, shining eyes.
The sled lurched slightly as Anya Amaya allowed it to settle the last few centimeters to the fabric deck. Turbines and generators unspooled, their flywheels winding down through the tonal scale as they slowed. Behind them, the hold hatch contracted like a sphincter, shutting out the light of space. The walls of hold 11 began to bulge as interior pressure was restored.
Amaya, conscious of Duncan’s pain, patched through Glory’s interior communications system: “Dietr, come now. You have two patients here in hold eleven.”
Eliana was startled by the chittering babble of odd voices outside the sled. “You have kaffirs here?”
“Monkeys, kraalheera,” Amaya said. “Cyborgs. Part machine, part animal. Chimpanzee, actually. I doubt there is any animal quite like them on Voerster.”
Several of the small beast-machines scrabbled over the sled, securing it to deck hold-downs. One paused to peer curiously in through the carapace.
“Dear Lord,” Osbertus breathed.
‘They are harmless, Mynheer,” Duncan said. “And we could not sail the ship without them.”
“Wonders,” the Astronomer-Select of Voerster said. “Is there no end of wonders?”
From somewhere in the vast dark of the hold came flashes of brilliant light. Duncan read the exterior atmosphere values and said, “You can open now, Sailing Master.”
“Yes, Captain.”
There were sounds behind the computer console. The ventral hatch dropped. Cold air rushed into the sled, together with beams of electric blue light. Damon Ng and Dietr Krieg, skinsuits gleaming, materialized out of the dark. Two medical carryalls waited at the foot of the ramp made by the open hatch.
Krieg rose from the open hatch to float in the microgravity. “Stay quietly, Duncan. You’ve been in a gravity well for twenty hours. Now where is the girl?” He answered himself by moving skillfully to Broni’s side. “This girl is anoxic. Bring a mask.”
Outside the lander, monkeys scrambled. Dietr drew a hypodermic airgun and loaded it with a beta-blocker. He smiled distractedly at the wide-eyed Broni. “This an old remedy, but still a good one. Give me an arm.” The gun popped and Broni gasped in surprise. Dietr immediately covered her face with an oxygen mask. “This is just until I can get you into an environmental control unit.”
Dietr now looked at Eliana. “Du lieber Gott, are you this child’s mother?”
Amaya said warningly, “This is the kraalheera Eliana Ehrengraf Voerster.”
“Kraalheera Voerster? Forgive me for staring, Gnadige Frau, but I was not expecting a beauty.” He took Eliana’s long, slender hand, and brushed it with his lips in the antique Euroterrestrial style.
It was an unheard-of intimacy for a stranger, but Eliana allowed it. “Aid my daughter. Healer. I ask humbly.”
“I will do what I can, Gnadige Frau. Be assured of it.”
He moved to Duncan. “What have you done to yourself, Master and Commander?”
“A bullet, Dietr. It can wait. Take care of the girl.”
“Don’t tell me my business, Duncan.” The Starmen had switched to Terrestrial Anglic, too colloquial and too changed by time to be easily understood by the Voertrekkers.
Duncan called monkeys into the sled and instructed them to lift Broni onto one of the waiting carryalls.
Osbertus KJoster braced himself unsteadily and declared, “I am Kloster, Astronomer-Select of Voerster. At your service, Healer.”
“Clavius. One-time syndic of Goldenwing Nepenthe.”
Dietr said to Duncan, “You brought the lot, my Captain.”
“Not everyone,” Duncan said wearily.
“Damn it, Dietr. Get Duncan into sick bay, will you?” Amaya snapped.
Dietr helped Duncan to the ramp. “Get in the carryall, Duncan. The leg is going gangrenous. I can smell it.”
“I need to be on my feet in thirty-six hours,” Duncan said. “Jean is still down there.”
“I see. What you want is not one miracle, but two.”
“But Brother Heater, you can work miracles, can’t you?”
The physician looked down at the unbeautiful boy and was empathically staggered by the strength of his Talent. He clearly did not speak Anglic, yet his empathy was so great that he understood precisely what was said, and what was meant. This one we must have. To train as Jean’s successor. Is that why he was brought here? To serve as payment for repairing the girl’s rheumatic heart? Kismet, Dietr thought.
Duncan would never agree to such an arrangement. A quid pro quo would not even enter the Thalassan’s mind. But it would enter mine, Dietr Krieg thought. I am not burdened with Duncan’s sense of honor. He looked at the Voertrekker woman.
She was, of course, an enigma. A beautiful enigma. No surpris
e, Dietr thought with a wry smile. Offworlders were impossible to fathom. And what beautiful woman was not a sphinx?
Dietr held up forceps with a lead fragment between the tongs. “Your Thalassan black magic did you good service, Duncan. But you didn’t get it all and you didn’t completely block infection. You have a low-order staph bug rotting your meat. You’ll need the full thirty-five hours in a recovery pod.”
Duncan, naked and bathed in ultraviolet light on the surgical table, said, “You said twenty-five.”
“I said thirty, but I can understand your eagerness to be up and about. The Ehrengraf is incredible. I haven’t seen a woman like that since home.”
Duncan said, “You have never seen a woman like that, Dietr. Nor have I.”
“It is like that, is it, Master and Commander? What an unsuspected romantic you are.” He signaled for a monkey to move the immobilized Duncan into a recovery pod.
“Wait,” Duncan said. “What about the girl?”
“It is more complicated than I thought. She needs a full heart-lung transplantation. I am not equipped to do that. On New Earth, or Gagarin--but not here. I can give her a prosthesis. That should help...” He broke off and said, “What is Voerster like, Duncan? A planet of empaths? The girl and the mother are both sensitives, and that moonfaced boy is a powerful Talent. Can we claim him?”
“We must deal with Osbertus Kloster first, then with the boy.”
“He makes me itch to give him a socket. I take it from what Black Clavius says, they think he is retarded?”
“Some do. Not all.”
“Duncan, a question. Syndic to syndic.”
“Ask, Dietr.”
“What’s to be done about Jean Marq?”
“I don’t know yet, Dietr.” He sounded weary and troubled.
“You will decide,” said the neurocybersurgeon, and signaled the attending monkey to move Duncan into the waiting pod.
Dietr was about to close the pod and put Duncan into cold-sleep when Black Clavius appeared in the surgery.
“Will his wound heal?” the black Starman asked.
“Of course. What do you take me for?” Dietr snapped.
“She is in the passageway. She wants to see him.”
Dietr said irritably, “Very well. Bring her in.”
Eliana appeared, still unsteady in the microgravity. She was an illusion of light and shadow, Dietr thought, with her gown floating about her and her long hair clouded about her pale, narrow face.
She looked at Duncan and hesitated. Dietr realized that she was startled by Duncan’s nudity. Of course. Voerster was a planet of prudes. God, what a pity, he thought.
“Shall I cover him?” he asked challengingly. “He is very nearly asleep. Harmless to great ladies.” Why, he asked himself, did he always eventually respond with hostility to aristocratic women? He had no such problems with Amaya, But then, Amaya’s presence was not so demanding as the Voertrekker woman’s. Was she taken with Duncan Longshanks? He wondered. He sighed with envy.
Eliana simply stood looking at Duncan as he sank into the healing gel within the pod, and into sleep as well.
“Thank you, Healer,” she said. “He feels safe in your care.”
She sensed that, did she? Dietr wondered how strong her empathic sense was. Powerful where Duncan was concerned, that was obvious. The neurocybersurgeon watched her leave the surgery closely escorted by Black Clavius. The Nepenthe Starman was teaching her how to move about in the near-weightless environment. She seemed to be learning her lessons well. There had been no hints of motion sickness or panic from either the Voertrekkerschatz or the Voertrekkersdatter. Lieber Gott, he thought. Finally. A language uglier than his own native Teutonic.
Dietr Krieg propelled himself into the transport plenum. Mira had appeared from nowhere, as she always did, and now rested comfortably across Eliana Ehrengraf s shoulders.
“Mynheera,” he called.
“Healer?”
“I will be ready for Broni within the hour. Please bring her to me then.”
Eliana found her daughter with Buele and the younger Rigger Damon, in the light-gravity spaces. She was watching them play a strange sort of tennis with nonsymmetrical balls that took weird rebounds from the court walls.
Broni declared, “Damon says that when the Healer finishes with me I shall be able to fly about like they do. Won’t that be wonderful, mynheera?”
Mira trilled with pleasure at the sound of Broni’s voice and left Eliana’s shoulder to leap into the girl’s arms.
“A cheet, mother! A cheet like Ylta.”
“Not a cheet, love, A cat Earthborn. We used to have them on Voerster, but they did not prosper.”
Broni was fascinated by the hair-thin wire extending from Mira’s head. The cat fixed her with an intense look and allowed her to touch the drogue. A young queen and an old queen, Mira thought. Now there was a proper number of females within the great-queen-who-was-not-alive. If they would stay there might be hunting in the deep night.
Black Clavius said, “It is her own equivalent of a Star-man’s socket” He touched his wooly hair. “The Healer’s idea.”
Mira fixed Broni with an intense stare and purred deep in her throat
Broni ran a hand over Mira’s short, silky coat. “You little beauty,” she whispered.
“Broni,” Eliana said quietly. “We shall take you to the physician within the hour.”
“Yes, mynheera,” the girl said fervently, “oh, yes. Will you tell the Voertrekker-Praesident?”
“Of course, Broni,” Eliana said quietly. “He is your father.”
“Does he really care what happens to me, mynheera?”
“Never doubt it, Broni,” Eliana said, and held her daughter in her arms.
“But he offered me to the Fonteins of Winter.”
“He was mistaken. That will not happen.”
Broni, holding Mira, was content with that. For the remainder of the hour she sat with her mother and Black Clavius watching Spacemen’s games--games she hoped one day to play.
32. AN EXAMPLE FOR THE PEOPLE
Cursing self-righteous men. Healer Tiegen Roark bent over the mistreated body of his fellow prisoner, Otto Klemmer. In all the world there was no one more certain he was always and forever korrekt than the Voertrekker-Praesident, Ian Voerster. It naturally followed that any subordinate--especially one who had benefitted from a close association with Voerster and his family--owed total allegiance to his patron. It made no difference whatever that the Luftkapitan’s airmanship had probably saved the lives of the Voertrekker-Praesident’s family, or that he had already suffered revolting torture at the hands of the Fonteins. Klemmer had bestowed his loyalty upon the Ehrengraf and not upon her husband. Otto Klemmer--a cholo, after all--had assisted her flight into the sky. Now he was paying the price.
But the rumor was out that The Voerster was in trouble with his fellow Kraalheeren. It was said among the new arrivals from Voersterstaad that the members of the Deliverative Assembly, unsupervised in the Kongresshalle, were demanding to know if what was being done to the heiress of Ehrengraf could also be done to any of them.
The threat to invoke the Law of Tribe did not trouble them, but the thought that First Landers’ Writs were now to be considered valid only at the pleasure of the Voertrekker-Praesident troubled them a great deal. If solemn land grants were to be dealt with cavalierly, where would it end?
At Ian Voerster’s command, Tiegen was sure, the Fonteins had taken up where they left off with Klemmer. He had been battered and disfigured by members of Eigen Fontein’s commando before breaking for freedom in the Volkenreiter. He was now undergoing more of the same treatment each time he was taken into the cellars of Einsamberg “for further questioning.”
Actually, there was no need whatever to interrogate Klemmer further. He had admitted, as had Tiegen Roark, that acting on Eliana Ehrengraf’s specific orders, they had created a diversion that allowed the Voertrekkerschatz and her daughter to escape the Planetia
ns with the Starpeople. Still, Ian Voerster pursued her as best he could, with ranting radio calls--unanswered--to the orbiting Goldenwing. The man was a fanatic.
The Voertrekker-Praesident seemed obsessed with the desire to retrieve his wife and daughter from those who had saved them and deliver them to those who would harm them. All in the name of peace with the Highlanders. Healer Roark was a man of no great intellect, but he was a Boer aristocrat to his fingertips. He was well on the way to developing a treasonous disesteem for the Head of State of Planet Voerster.
He daubed at the airship captain’s sweaty, battered face with a cloth moistened in the abominable wine served with his supper of burnt ebray and coarse bread.
“Is it very painful, Klemmer?” he asked. As a favored physician, he had never before had to deal with the effects of fists and clubs. It was sickening. Even the blood shed in his student dueling days had been spilled under almost aseptic conditions. Not like this. What beasts the Highlanders were.
Klemmer had difficulty speaking. The puncture wounds made in his lower lip by Eigen’s lumpen had festered again and the swelling disfigured Klemmer’s long, narrow face.
“The Fontein was here,” Tiegen said. “He says we must use the radio to speak with the Voertrekkerschatz. He says we must tell her he will kill us if she does not return with Broni.”
“To hell with The Fontein,” Klemmer mumbled. Hatred burned in his eyes. “And to hell with Highlanders. May their twelve fingers rot and fall off while masturbating.” Of all the Planetian attributes, their occasional polydactylism was most offensive to Lowlanders.
“Yes,” Tiegen said. “But it would do no harm to speak with the lady.”
Klemmer closed his eyes in angry exasperation. He thinks l am a coward, Tiegen thought. But I am not. I flew with him, didn’t I? I selflessly helped conduct his pig of an airship over these mountains, at night, in high winds and rain--all so that mynheera and the Spacepeople could take Broni to the Starman Healer. Shouldn’t that count for something?
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