*That was not my intention,” the Voertrekker-Praesident said heavily. He thought:
The truth is that we have more in common with our Grassersee kaffirs than with this Voertrekker-descended human variant.
But the widening gap between white and white on Voerster had to be stopped. It was too late to annul the physical changes taking place among the people of the Planetia. The medical skills that had created them were lost a thousand years ago. But the men of Voertrekker blood on Voerster dared not break the fragile social compact they had made with one another long, long ago when they decided to flee Earth for the sake of the chimera of racial purity.
Not while we still send kaffirs to the Friendly Islands for infractions of the racial laws,
The Voerster thought
. They are more civilized than that in the high country.
Ian Voerster tried to regard Vikter Fontein calmly and dispassionately, as a ruler and politician should. It was obvious that Fontein Kraal was prospering. Fontein’s clothes had been made by a skilled tailor, probably in Pretoria, where the people of the Planetia customarily conducted their business. His tunic was made of deep green felt and velvet flashed with gold. There were gold chains around his bulging neck, a small fortune’s worth of them. On his head, in the highland manner, he wore a green tarn on which the Fontein badge was worked with more gold and several quite respectable stones.
The diamond mines of Fontein Kraal were productive, that was obvious. If Broni goes to Georg or Eigen Fontein, Voerster thought, she will never want for anything tangible.
Only for air to breathe and a human being to love her
. His own sense of honor mocked him cruelly.
“Will you say what you brought me here to say?” The Fontein said. “I feel confined in this stone box of a house. The walls are too near. The air is too thick. How do you breathe this soup?”
There was actually a sheen of sweaty moisture on The Fontein’s bluish brow. As a courtesy to the Kraalheer of Winter, the temperature in the room stood at fourteen degrees Celsius, five degrees less than Ian Voerster found comfortable, even wrapped in his customary furs. Yet the dour Highlander from the northeastern edge of the continent found it too warm. Clearly, very special arrangements would have to be made for Broni’s comfort if she were to live on the high plain.
“It would be a tragedy if, after all these hard years, the Voertrekkers on Voerster should fall into white-on-white strife,” Ian Voerster said. “Do we agree on that?”
“There are worse things, Voerster.”
Being a Highlander he would think so, the Voertrekker-Praesident thought. But civil war would not be like the tribal skirmishes of the high plateau. What technology existed on Voerster was centered in the Sea of Grass.
“I have no experience of war,” Voerster said. “I have no wish to acquire any. There are better ways.”
The pale gray eyes narrowed. Fontein was not-so confident as he wished to appear. That was worth remembering. Once an alliance was made, it had to be clear who was the dominating partner.
“I thought you would never get to the point,” Fontein said.
“I am not there yet,” Voerster said, controlling a flash of anger. To have one of this creature’s get as son-in-law would be taxing, he thought.
But necessary
. The Trekkerpolizei Domestic Intelligence Unit warned that the highland tribes were ready to start raiding the towns and villages of the Grassersee. “I am prepared to offer you a post in the government.”
Fontein placed another hand on the table. Twelve fingers.
Angatch!
(The Voertrekker, as he often did, fell back on naming the kaffir gods of the nanny who had raised him.) He really must stop reacting with such revulsion to the Planetian’s physical deformities. But those hands were disgusting.
“I would never live in Voersterstaad. Not if you made me Voertrekker-Praesident.”
Ian Voerster flushed. “The post could be honorary. Most government posts are, Vikter,” Voerster said with controlled mildness.
“What else are you offering? How badly do you want the Highlanders to stay in the high country?”
Voerster regarded The Fontein speculatively. So even after years of separate development, even separate evolution, a Voertrekker was still a Voertrekker. Cupidity had been a Voertrekker trait when the first Boer commando left the Cape Colony for the north. Nothing had changed, not really. For some reason the realization made him feel far more confident about what he must do.
“I propose an alliance, Kraalheer. I propose linking our two ancient families by marriage.”
The heavy face betrayed cupidity. “I have two sons,” Vikter Fontein said. “Georg and Eigen.”
The Voerster said, “To me one Fontein is like another. I have only one daughter.”
“They say she is sickly,”
“It is a lie.”
“Could she live on the Planetia?”
“Arrangements would have to be made.”
“And she could bear sons?” The eyes were cavernous now and the strange hands had vanished to fondle the holsters where his customary weapons had rested before being surrendered to Colonel Ryndik.
“Yes.”
May the Lord God of Hosts forgive me,
Ian Voerster thought
. He knows about Broni’s frailty
. “There is more.”
“Offer, Voertrekker-Praesident. What more?” Not nearly so scornful now.
Cupidity runs our world, Ian Voerster thought. You are a shopkeeper, after all, Fontein.
“The estate of Einsamberg. The ancient Ehrengraf Kraal. It is part of Broni’s inheritance. To be yours when the banns are read.”
“And the town of Grimsel, on the Shieldwall. And the funicular railroad through the Pass.”
He might be a great Kraalheer in the highlands,
Voerster thought coldly.
But he bargains like a
lumpen
shopkeeper.
“A plebiscite in Grimsel.” Most of the inhabitants of the Shieldwall town were Highlanders in any case and were already Fontein partisans. “But not the railway.” That was the only access from the Grassersee to the Planetia. It could not be exclusively in Vikter Fontein’s hands.
The Kraalheer of Winter stared at Ian Voerster. Purple-red lips within the mat of beard slowly formed a grimace that among Highlanders passed for a smile.
“Done,” he said. “With one alteration.”
“Which is?”
“I have been a widower for ten years. I see no reason for wasting a young lowland beauty on either of my brutes.”
For a moment the Voertrekker-Praesident was nonplussed.
The matted smile broadened and the eyes grew cold as sea-ice. “As you said yourself, Cousin. One Fontein is like any other, I will marry the girl myself.”
The vehicle, commonly called “a steamer,” was a massive cart that rode on six unshod steel wheels. The seven-meter-long machine, which surrendered its rear deck to a cast-iron boiler and several polished brass pistons and rocker arms, was controlled from an open cockpit in front--furnished with three small seats upholstered in leather, two forward and one behind beside the luggage bay.
Mynheer Osbertus Kloster sat in the right-hand front seat before the tiller and drove the clattering, wheezing car swiftly southward and across wind through the Sea of Grass toward Voertrekkerhoem.
The steamer progressed at good speed across the flat ground with an assortment of clangs and hisses, leaving astern a cloud of dust, steam, and flying grass. Beside the Astronomer-Select sat Black Clavius, knapsack and balichord clutched protectively in his lap. He peered ahead into the near distance lighted by the three focussed gas lanterns on the bow of the steamer, and to the sides where the tall grass lashed and whipped as the vehicle stormed by.
Electric carriages were fairly common on Voerster, but they were limited by the primitive batteries Voertrekker industry was able to produce. The planet supplied the lead and acid used, but lacked the more sophisticated materials of which the old science texts spoke. The technology of the First Landers and their descendants for the first three hundred years had been handicapped by the limitations imposed on specialization by the colonization plan. By the time of the Rebellion, science and industry had become well established on Voerster. But all advancement was stifled and techniques were lost as the war against the kaffirs became a Voertrekker priority. And in the dark ages that followed the Rebellion there had been a revulsion against the technology producing the weapons that had so nearly depopulated the planet. Scientific knowledge became a swift ticket to the gallows as Luddite moralists did their best to reduce Voerster to the presumed safety of a primitive, agricultural world. Scientists and inventors were no longer lynched on Voerster, but thirteen hundred years since First Landing, the Astronomer-Select Kloster’s steam car was a “state-of-the-art” device.
Both Clavius and Osbertus wore white-cloth dusters to save their clothing and protective goggles over their eyes against the flying grasses and the lash of the Nachtebrise.
“Mynheer, this is breathtaking,” Clavius said. “How fast are we going?”
Osbertus glanced at the relative wind gauge fixed to the double-monocle windshield and said proudly, “We are making fifty-four kilometers an hour. Do you know that style of measurement, Clavius?”
The black man smiled broadly into the wind. “For some years now, Mynheer Osbertus, I have moved only on my two feet, and somewhat more slowly. But yes, I do remember something about kilometers and hours.”
The astronomer squinted into the wind and chided himself for asking so foolish a question of a man who had journeyed among the stars. But Black Clavius, with that strange sensitivity he so often displayed, said, “This mode of travel is most exciting, Mynheer.”
Osbertus risked a quick glance to see if the big man was ridiculing him. But Clavius was plainly enjoying the charge of the steamer through the Sea of Grass, with all of its noise and bumps and attendant discomforts.
Clavius said, “Between the stars, there is great beauty, but no excitement. One floats in eternity, seldom near enough to anything to experience speed. Here the sensation of motion is irresistible. Can we go faster?”
“Faster than this?” Osbertus was a trifle breathless from the steamer’s rush through the Grassersee. The mech who had assembled the steamer, from parts ordered by dirigible from Pretoria, was a brash journeyman. He had boasted to the Astronomer-Select that the steamer’s speed was limited only by the terrain under the wheels and the courage of the tillerman. But he soberly suggested that given the Mynheer’s age and eyesight, speeds in excess of sixty kilometers per hour were unwise.
Eliana, after riding with Osbertus (How she had smiled and laughed with delight!), had admonished him. “I enjoyed it tremendously, Cousin,” she said. “But you must drive carefully. Who shall be my friend if you crack your skull?”
Osbertus took a deep breath and made the ultimate gesture of trust. “Would you like to drive, Clavius?”
For an unlicensed kaffir to drive any powered vehicle on Voerster was discouraged. Once it had been a punishable offense. Now it was only custom.
“I thank you for the offer, Mynheer. But I had best remain in the hands of one who knows how to handle this powerful machine.”
Osbertus Kloster sat up a trifle straighter and flexed his cramped knees. There was very little room between the thin steel floorboards and the tiller. But despite his discomfort, he was compelled to reply to the Starman’s graciousness in kind. He advanced the throttle, valving steam until the steamer’s speed reached a full seventy kilometers per hour. Behind, the rooster-tail of grass and immature spore pods rose even higher.
“Marvelous, Mynheer Osbertus, marvelous,” Black Clavius said over the sounds of passage. His great hands encircled the neck of the balichord, and as the steamer’s speed increased he looked skyward at the star-river of the Milky Way. “’Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them.’“
“You astonish me, Clavius,” Osbertus said. “That was from the Book of Genesis, wasn’t it? We have so few eidetics on Voerster. Do you remember everything?”
“Yes, Mynheer.”
“Remarkable.”
“It is not always a blessing, Mynheer.”
“Yes. I can understand how that might be. One seldom imagines a Starman suffering the ordinary problems of life.”
“We do, Mynheer.” His teeth showed white again in that dazzling smile. “And some not so ordinary.” He paused; he seemed suddenly to be listening to something only he could hear above the clangor of the racing steamer. “Mynheer. Stop.”
“The Mynheera Eliana summoned us posthaste to Broni, Clavius.”
“Nevertheless. Please stop now.”
Perplexed, Osbertus Kloster reduced the throttle and hauled on the brake lever. It took the steamer almost a full kilometer to come to a halt. It stood wheezing and emitting vapor on the dark grassland.
Quite suddenly an ebray, a gravid female, lurched to her feet and stood spraddle-legged, regarding the lamps of the steamer with huge, gleaming black eyes. The animal was a meter high at the withers and stood on legs as delicate as grass-stems. In full, leaping flight--what the Voertrekkers called “pranking”--the ebray was capable of outrunning the steamer. But this one was about to give birth. She had the ravaged look of a beast being consumed from within, as indeed she was. A necrogene, she could expect her voracious offspring to gnaw and rip its way into the world through the soft velvety hide of her belly. The ebray would then die and the young ebray would stay with the maternal corpse until the edible flesh was consumed before trotting away from the remains of the creature who had, in effect, transferred her future to him.
“Go around her” Clavius whispered. “She is close to her time.”
Osbertus, not an unkind man, was strangely moved by the Wired Man’s obvious concern for the doomed ebray. He advanced the throttle slowly and drove a wide circle around the expectant necrogene, who turned to keep facing the steamer, tottering weakly on legs that would no longer firmly sustain her.
When Osbertus had consulted his compass and resumed his course through the grass for Voertrekkerhoem at a somewhat slower pace, he asked. “How did you know?”