“Will we have to put him ashore?” Duncan asked, frowning.
“He can recover. Perhaps.”
“But
why
did he do it? To
Anya
?” Damon demanded. He was sweat-drenched, with the stink of his phobia still on him. But inwardly he was angry--and proud. Anya Amaya had retired to her quarters without a comment.
“You would have to know more about Jean than you do, boy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Krieg’s narrow eyebrows arched. “Very well. Damon.”
Duncan regarded the man in the pod. Krieg had surreptitiously tranquilized him on coming to the bridge. “What do we tell him, Dietr?”
“I have an idea. It may be worthless. But we can see. It might make a difference.”
“Anything. We have lost Han Soo; I don’t want to lose Jean too.”
“All right. Damon. Go to his compartment and look in the drawer under his quarterberth. Bring the thing you find there.”
Mystified, Damon Ng floated into the transit tunnel. He was back almost immediately with the paracoita.
“He has a
doll
?”
“It is a bit more than that, youngster. A little tolerance is in order,” Krieg said. He looked at Duncan. “Well, you are the Master and Commander. She’s his property, after all.”
“My name is Amalie. Fuck me, please”
the paracoita said seductively.
Startled, Damon dropped it. It struck the deck, sensed its position, reclined, opened its thighs.
“Yes,” Duncan said. “That may have been what he was trying to do. We will do it for him.”
“I don’t understand any of this, Duncan,” Damon Ng protested.
“Put her through the port.”
“Out? Out there?”
“Yes.”
Damon did as he was told. Soon the paracoita was drifting free in space, a few meters from the bridge dome. She looked pathetic, her xylon hair floating in a yellow cloud about her smiling, stupid face.
“She’ll stay there for hours,” Damon protested.
“Yes,” Duncan said, turning away.
Krieg regarded Damon with more melancholy than the young man had believed him capable of showing. “When he asks you--if he does--tell him he did it himself. As a joke. Tell him you find it very funny.” The neurocybersurgeon turned for the transit tubes. “But of course, he may prefer not to ask. A man like Jean may prefer to make up his own lost memories.”
Perplexed, Damon left the bridge and floated slowly toward his own compartment. At the valve to Anya’s he paused, wondering. When he looked in she seemed asleep. But the girl was not asleep. She was lying in her bunk reliving the terror of her ordeal. She had been hoping that Duncan would come to her, but he had not.
When Damon turned to go, she said quietly, “Come in, Damon. I would rather not be alone just now.”
A small fire burned in the raised hearth of Broni’s sitting room, but the chill of early morning remained deep when Clavius and Osbertus entered. The girl was propped up on a massive, opulent chair, dwarfing her slender figure. Her hair had been dressed in the formal Voertrekker triple tiara of golden braids. Her cheeks had been pinched for color, and under a jumper of softly tanned ebray leather she wore a nightdress of sea green, long-sleeved and fitted to her delicate wrists.
Her silver cheet lay curled in her lap, deliberately grooming its long, slender forelegs and emitting the occasional soft growl that indicated contentment. Cheet, like the Earth cats for which they were named, were uncommonly aloof and difficult to domesticate and they were prone to vanish and take up with their feral brethren in the grass sea or on the mountainsides. But Broni had a way with animals.
Clavius was touched to see her arrayed with such care. It was a measure of how she regarded him, and for that he was grateful. But if the Voertrekker-Praesident were to see her it would mean trouble. To Ian Voerster, a kaffir was a kaffir. No more, no less.
The sky beyond the tall windows was turning slowly to a dusty powdered blue. Five of the Six Giants were setting, one after another. Smuts was gone, as were Thor and Drache. Wallenberg shone low in the west. And Erde, called Mandela in the townships, had dipped close to the western horizon and was rising again in the north, as was her habit at this time of year. The kaffirs claimed red Chaka--the giant the Voertrekkers called Thor--as their tutelary star, but the women chose Mandela, far north of the ecliptic plane and always in the sky. “That is our mother, never setting,” they said in their women’s songs. The kaffirs did not even use the Voertrekker name for Voerster. In the townships it was
Afrika
, the mythic parent of the kaffir race.
Eliana said, regarding her daughter protectively, “She would not meet with you, Starman, unless we allowed her to prepare.”
“I understand, mynheera,” Clavius said.
Osbertus whispered, “When does she sleep?”
“When she can,” Eliana said quietly.
Tiegen Roark, the Healer, stood by the door looking uncomfortably at Black Clavius. The Starman made him uncomfortable. He was unaccustomed to kaffirs with such
presence
. The pedagogues at the Healer’s Faculty would be outraged by this black offworlder, Roark thought. Kaffirs were not supposed to look like Clavius, were not to carry themselves with such authority. They were not nearly so dark of skin, either. Voerster’s kaffirs were far distant from their purebred black ancestors, though no one in either kraal or township spoke of it.
Tiegen was still shaken by the conversation earlier with the Voertrekkerschatz. Eliana was speaking marital insubordination at the very least--a serious infraction of Voertrekker custom and legal code. Viewed dispassionately, she was hinting at treason and betrayal. If there was one man on Planet Voerster capable of surrendering Eliana Ehrengraf Voerster to the Trekkerpolizei, that man was Ian Voerster. .
Tiegen watched Clavius walk across the bare, polished stone floor and bow formally to the Voertrekkersdatter. “I am delighted to see you again, mynheera.”
Broni regarded him with open pleasure, and with more animation than Eliana or Tiegen Roark had seen her display for many days.
“Welcome to Voertrekkerhoem, Clavius. I am glad you finally came. It’s very large, isn’t it? Too large, I think. There are dozens of rooms we never use.” She spied the balichord and sat up straighter in the great chair. “Oh, I was hoping you would bring it. The plans you made for my artificer mustn’t have been quite right, Clavius, because my balichord doesn’t sound at all like yours.”
Clavius took his instrument from his shoulder and caressed the inlaid offworld woods of the keyboard and tambour. “That is because it is a young instrument, mynheera. It takes many years for a balichord to mature.”
Broni regarded the Starman and said, without self-pity, “I haven’t got a lifetime, Clavius.”
Clavius struck a chord that was like a labyrinth of sound. “That is a matter of definition, mynheera,” he said.
The cheet reacted to the sound by arching its back and baring its teeth at the balichord. Then it jumped down and stalked across the floor to arrange itself on the hearth, still regarding Clavius as though he were dinner.
Broni laughed and said, “Ylla is jealous, Clavius. Can you feel it?” She made the clicking sound with which Voertrekkers caught the attention of their cheets and other domestic animals and murmured to the small beast, “It is all right, Ylla. He is our friend.”
The cheet stretched itself carefully before the fire and settled down to watch. Broni said, “You see, Clavius? He is thinking it over.”
Clavius smiled. The child was right, of course; the jealous pet was considering his mistress’ judgment. One more bit of evidence that Broni was a natural empath.
He said to Eliana,’Tell me how she fares, mynheera.”
Eliana turned to Roark.’Tiegen?”
Roark inclined his head toward the door.
Clavius placed the priceless balichord in Broni’s lap and said, “Play it if you can.”
“I will,” Broni said.
Clavius followed the Healer from the room, and Osbertus said to Eliana, “Has there been any more nonsense about a husband for Broni?”
“None The Voerster has shared with me, Cousin,” Eliana said.
Osbertus watched as Broni applied herself to the balichord’s keyboard and strings. Talk of marriage was something she had heard all her life. As the daughter of generations of Voersters, she knew her duty. What she
felt
, Osbertus Kloster could only surmise.
“He wouldn’t force that fragile child into marriage. How could he even consider such a thing?” he protested. Eliana’s eyes showed her distress. But she spoke with the controlled calm of a woman of her class. “We have discussed it, Osbertus.”
“I don’t mean to pry, mynheera.”
“So let’s not talk about it.” Eliana Ehrengraf s expression changed from shut to open in an instant, a typical shift for the Voertrekkerschatz. Under the calm, dark beauty lay a personality both volatile and fiery. Her sudden smile warmed Osbertus as she said, “It was good of you to bring The Kaffir, Cousin.” Only Clavius, of all the blacks on Voerster, commanded that clearly upper-case honorific.
The Astronomer-Select knew her well enough to know that she was sick with worry over Broni. What had Ian Voerster been saying to her? he wondered. And what advice was she receiving from that so-called physician who spent his days at Voertrekkerhoem, mooning after what he dare not touch? Infidelity among the mynheeren was no small sin, it was a capital crime. He hoped that Eliana kept that always in mind. Not that any man alive could corrupt the heiress of Ehrengraf against her will.
It was likely, however, that Tiegen had been making himself important by telling her dire things about Broni’s chances of seeing another season. It would be just like him. He would do it because it was
right
to be
honest
, and he was a man who
relished
being right.
How could any man who loved her take such satisfaction in saying things that pierced her heart? Perhaps they taught self-righteousness as a specialty at the Healer’s Faculty.
Osbertus Kloster wondered if he were pinning too many hopes on the Starman, who was, after all, only a kaffir. Osbertus’ grasshopper mind leaped and danced from one idea to another with a speed that often made him seem giddy. But he was far from that.
I, of all people on Voerster
, the Astronomer-Select thought,
should understand how backward our science is. Clavius comes from a different sort of world. And
, he added with a touch of superstitious awe,
Starmen live---if not forever, then nearly forever
. Black Clavius might well have been slightly mad, but at one time he had performed mysterious duties aboard the
Nepenthe
. He came from a Goldenwing syndicate
. I wish I had the capacity to know what Black Clavius knows
, Osbertus thought. But there was no chance of that, not even if he, like a Wired Starman, were to live a thousand years.
The thought depressed him enormously.
He raised his bowed head to speak again with Eliana when he heard a chord of music. It was far simpler than any chord Black Clavius might have struck, but it nevertheless brought a shiver of pleasure as it hung in the cold air of the vast room. Broni laughed with delight and struck another and still another. “Isn’t it a
beautiful
balichord, mynheera?” she asked her mother.
“It sings.”
“And you, Broni love, would you sing for your old Cousin Osbertus?” The astronomer regarded the girl tenderly, and thought:
This will be a darker life without Broni
.
Eliana studied Osbertus and he knew that she was reading his thoughts as clearly as if he had stated them. He felt constrained to say, “Clavius
will
help, Cousin. I promise you.”
But he knew that he had just done what he often admonished himself never to do in his dealings with Eliana Ehrengraf. He had promised the undeliverable, lying to her out of love and concern.
From the doorway, Clavius said, “Play, Broni. One of the old songs.”
Broni, with that way she had of anticipating, struck up an ancient melody.
Tiegen Roark, standing behind the Starman, knew how carefully and diligently she had practiced this piece. And he realized now why the girl had insisted on dressing as she had. He felt a dampness in his eyes. He was not a sentimental man, but Broni had a way of affecting everyone around her. There was an old and very foolish saying about certain people: “To know her is to love her.” In Broni’s case it was not foolish.
Ciavius recognized the tune and nodded approval. It was a song he had taught her during one of his encounters with Eliana and her daughter in a township belonging to the Ehrengraf Kraal.
The Starman walked to the raised hearth and sat down beside the cheet. The animal came to him and settled trustingly in his lap. He ran his pink-palmed hand over the silvery fur and began to sing:
“Alas, my love, ye do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
And I have loved you so long
Delighting in your company. “
Broni joined him, singing with a sweet, pure voice:
“Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight;
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my Lady Greensleeves?”
Osbertus listened, blushing, to the verse that followed, so intimate, so improper for a mynheera and a kaffir to be singing together:
“Thy gown was all of grassy green
Thy sleeves of satin hanging by,
Which made thee be our harvest queen,
And yet thou wouldst not love me...”
“Clavius,” the old man protested. “I hardly think--”
Eliana touched his arm in restraint. “Let be, Cousin. How long has it been since you have seen her so animated? She is flirting with the Starman and he with her. Let be.”
Osbertus subsided and listened until Black Clavius and the Voertrekkersdatter finished the song. When the last notes of the balichord had died away, Broni said, “Cousin, Tiegen. Do you know how old that song is?”
“Very old, I am sure,” Osbertus said uncomfortably.
“Even older,” Broni said with a flashing smile. “It is said that it was written by a wicked Brit king of Earth to woo a beautiful mistress. Oh, thousands of years ago.”