What Clavius did not give voice to, was the aching fear that the Goldenwing--Osbertus Kloster had identified it as the
Gloria Coelis
--would come and go, and he, Black Clavius, would never see it. The image of a tachyon-sailing ship was ever in his mind, like a lovely, unattainable
Glory
in the sky.
Fencik took a rolled cigarette from the pocket of his prison shirt and offered it to Clavius. “Five rand, kaffir? That’s fair. It’s first-class weed.”
Clavius spread his empty hands and let his deep voice take on the singsong cadences of a native township kaffir. “Where would a poor black kaffir come by five rand, Zor?”
Fencik slapped his thigh and laughed aloud, “Oh, good. Very good, Clavius-kaffir. You have the black lingo down perfectly.” He put the weed between his lips and lighted it. As he exhaled luxuriously, he said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Clavius sat on the stoop and watched a gang of fish fitfully kicking at a ball. The game was ancient. He had seen it played on worlds light-years from Voerster. He took a deep breath and bared his great chest to the white light of the low Luyten sun. Odd how the melanin that had brought the kaffirs to Voerster as an underclass protected them so well from the high ultraviolet in Luyten 726’s radiation. By contrast, Voertrekkers of every social class, those who had kept themselves racially unmixed, were uniformly pale of skin and likely to remain so. The incidence of skin cancer among the whites of Voerster was--he apologized to the Lord for the terrible pun--astronomical.
Clavius was a patient man, but he disliked inactivity and he missed his balichord. He wondered if Broni still had it, or if it had been taken from her. Knowing the Mynheera Eliana Ehrengraf, it was unlikely that anyone would try to confiscate anything Mynheera Broni wished to keep.
He let the pallid sun caress his torso and began to sing.
“Is it so?
Really so?
A Bible story
Can be gory,
And not necessarily so!”
“That will get you in trouble with the Unter Oberst damn quick, kaffir,” Fencik said. “He’s a great believer in Scripture, our Oberst.”
‘“And he spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five,’“ Clavius said.
“You’re a wild one, kaffir. Where did you learn such things?”
Clavius, still smiling, said, “’So the number of them, with their brethren that were instructed in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred fourscore and eight.’“
“Is that the number of Starmen? Tell the truth, Clavius-kaffir. And don’t exaggerate. Of Starmen I have seen one. You.”
“’Thou art my hiding place; thou shall preserve me from trouble; thou shall encompass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.’”
“What an exasperating creature you are,” Fencik declared, flipping his weed in a high arc to the stubbled grass. “I often wonder why kaffirs were brought to Voerster. Knowing you, I wonder even harder.”
Clavius showed his pink palms in a gesture of innocence. “‘For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.’“
“Enough, enough, y’bloody black man. I stagger under the weight of your knowledge of Scripture. Pity, Clavius, have pity.”
“Most Starmen are eidetics, Fencik,” Clavius said.
“Which means?”
“That we can’t forget.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“Poor bugger. Forgetting is no bad thing unless you are an angel.”
Fencik jumped to his feet with surprising agility. “Listen!”
“A dirigible. I hear it.”
“There.” A silvery shape glistened in the sunlight. The drone of hydrogen motors grew. Since from this place men only went south to the Friendlies, inmates were frightened when an airship appeared in the sky. Police dirigibles were “balloons to nowhere.”
In a hushed voice, Fencik said, “Are they coming for you, Clavius?”
“Perhaps.” Clavius was thinking of Broni.
“Better you than me, kaffir.” The thin prisoner was undergoing a transformation. He appeared to be withdrawing himself from any personal contact. It was as though if the airship had, indeed, come for Clavius, it initiated a process of disengagement so complete that by the time the ship lifted off again with the Starman aboard, Fencik would have forgotten he ever knew anyone named Clavius.
It happened that way.
“I am Trekkerpolizeioberst Transkei, kaffir. Do you remember me?”
“Indeed I do, Mynheer Oberst. You arrested me,” Clavius said.
He sat, unshackled, on the hard metal bench that ran down the centerline of the gondola of the police dirigible.
Close to the glass of the outward-slanting window, he could see the disk of the craft’s starboard propeller, The carefully burnished bronze blades glittered in the white sunlight.
Clavius found himself the only prisoner aboard the airship. The benches were empty and through the open door to the pilots’ deck he could see only the men flying the machine and three heavily armed policemen. Clavius wondered wryly at the precautions taken for the transport of one peace-loving kaffir.
“I have been instructed to treat you with consideration, kaffir. Have I your assurance that you will not attempt to escape?”
Clavius regarded the jagged mountains a thousand meters below the dirigible. “I have no wings, Mynheer Oberst,” he said mildly.
The police officer was gray, thin-lipped as a lizard, and totally uninterested in any discussion of capabilities with his prisoner. “You can be cuffed or not,” he said. “It is up to you, kaffir.”
“I will not attempt to leave this dirigible without your permission, Mynheer Oberst,” Clavius said solemnly.
“Very well.” The officer signalled for one of the
lumpen
constables to enter the compartment. “Bring the prisoner his meal.” At Detention One the detainees ate twice a day, both meals exactly the same: grain porridge, a two-hundred-gram portion of boiled faux-goat meat, a tangeroon, and a mug of hot kava. On the police airship the meal was the same, save that it was cold. The lifting gas used on Voerster was helium, but the motors were powered by volatile hydrogen and Voertrekker airshipmen did not light fires aloft.
The constable brought in a tray. The police colonel withdrew to the flight deck. Clavius was mildly surprised to discover that he was hungry. He ate in silence under the somber gaze of the
lumpe
. Young, Clavius thought, barely out of adolescence. But probably sensible, as most of the Voertrekfcers were sensible. In a static society that did not permit the commons access to political power, it made a certain sense to seek advancement in the police. Clearly the Trekkerpolizeioberst thought so. Under that desiccated exterior lived a man certain that he had made only sensible choices in life.
How wonderful, Black Clavius thought, to be so certain. He closed his eyes and addressed himself again to the Almighty.
Why did you make us all so different, Lord? Between the Oberst and me there is a gulf that has nothing to do with light-years or uptime-downtime. I am never as sure Monday is the first day of the week as he is that Voerster is the Universe and that he stands at the center of it. How come, Lord? Answer me that? Thus saith the Preacher: “For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
“Kaffir? Are you asleep?”
Clavius opened his eyes and regarded the young policeman. He was leaning forward so that he could speak without being heard by the Oberst on the flight deck.
“Is it true you came from the stars?”
“It is true, Mynheer.” The use of the honorific appeared to make the boy uncomfortable. It wasn’t surprising. The
lumpen
lived even bleaker lives than did the township kaffirs. “But I have been on Voerster for many years.”
“Voerster is a long way from the stars,” the policeman said. He lowered his voice even more. “I bear you no ill will, kaffir.”
“I am glad of that, constable.”
“Elmi taught that all men were equal. So our preachers say.”
Unlikely, that, Clavius thought. But it was a pleasant fantasy. One that could do no harm to a world set in amber. It was interesting to know that the Cult of Elmi had reached even into police ranks. The mynheeren discounted it, and probably they should. There was not enough of anything, even anger, on Voerster to start another Rebellion. But a gentle cult might comfort the people as the days dwindled down.
“They say a Goldenwing is coming for you.” The youngster had pale eyes and they were fixed on Clavius with what appeared to be envy, mingled with fear. My reputation as shaman, sorcerer and witch appears to have reached the airborne Trekkerpolizei, Clavius thought. I would have preferred less notoriety, but one could not roam downworld with a computer drogue socket in one’s hair without arousing a certain awe.
“Is that true, kaffir?”
“I have heard that a Goldenwing is coming, but not for me, I assure you.”
“That’s too bad. Look down there.”
Clavius did as he was bid. To the south, white against a pale blue sky and a ribbon of almost purple sea, there were sheer frozen cliffs.
“The Southern Ice,” the
lumpe
said.
Clavius felt a chill that was not from the open cabin window.
“And there, ahead.” The peninsula over which they had been flying ended in a jumbled archipelago of tiny, rocky islands.
“The Friendlies?”
The constable nodded. “Detention Two admin is on the tip of the peninsula and the compounds are spread over a dozen islands between here and the edge of the Southern Ice.”
Clavius accepted that gloomy news in silence.
The dirigible droned on through a clear, cold sky. Forty minutes passed. Fifty. The Oberst appeared again.
“Get up, kaffir. Look below.”
The dirigible was swinging over a bleak settlement on the largest of the islands in sight. Row after row of stone-and-sod barracks covered the great stone in the sea. The shorelines of Detention Two and the neighboring islets were white with seafoam as the current of the Walvis Strait flowed in a torrent from west to east. Without large satellites to make tides on Voerster, the Great Southern Ocean was powered by the vast Coriolis force of the planet’s rapid spin.
“Take a good look, kaffir.”
Clavius could see tiny, antlike figures moving far below. What did the passage of a dirigible at this height mean to them? God help the poor souls, he thought. Probably nothing at all.
The dirigible made a long, slow circle. Another. Then the pilots pointed the nose to the north across the Sea of Lions. Soon nothing was in sight but ocean, whitecapped and frigid, between the Walvis Strait and the south coast of the Grassersee a thousand kilometers to the north.
“‘And they showed Galileo the instruments,’” Clavius whispered, “’and said to him: “recant.”‘“
“What did you say, kaffir?” the Oberst asked.
“Nothing, Mynheer,” Clavius said. “It was something that happened very long ago and very far away.”
For hours they flew over the Sea of Lions. The Luyten sun was sinking off the port quarter when the constable, who had returned to guard the prisoner, asked, “Is it true, kaffir, that you were born on Earth?”
“It is, young man.”
“Don’t call me that. I am a constable of the Trekkerpolizei.”
“My apologies, Mynheer,” said Clavius. “Where did you learn to sound like that? Our kaffirs don’t talk that way.”
“No, your kaffirs sound like what they are, Mynheer. Natives of Voerster.”
Searching, thought Clavius, watching the constable’s face grow even paler, his lips grow thin. Like any human being. Searching for himself. For others. For his world and what it means.
He also suspects I am being insolent, and that is still forbidden on Voerster
. On any planet, the
lumpen
or equivalent were more protective of status than were the aristocrats.
Lord
, he told God,
your designs do not vary much
.
The Oberst appeared in the door and spoke sharply to the constable. “Your orders are to watch, not to fraternize.”
“Sir.”
The Oberst looked at Clavius. “Have you thought about what you saw back there near the Ice?”
“Yes, Mynheer.”
“Remove yourself to the flight deck, constable. I wish to interrogate the prisoner.”
“Sir!” The constable stamped his foot, making the deck tremble. He withdrew. And the Oberst, who slid closed the door to the flight deck, stationed himself between Clavius and the starboard windows.
“You are traveling at the express command of the Voertrekker-Praesident,” he declared.
“I thought perhaps I might be,” Clavius said.
“Mynheer Oberst.”
“Mynheer Oberst.”
“You expected to be reprieved, then.”
“I did not know I had been convicted of anything, Mynheer Oberst. Have I been?”
“In absentia. Of persistent vagrancy.”
“Ah. I see.”
“On Voerster that is a serious charge, kaffir.”
“I am sure it is, Mynheer.”
To break the taut silence, Clavius asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“That’s not your concern, kaffir,” the Oberst said.
Did that man have any idea how absurd that statement was?
Lord, doesn’t he think I have the right to be “concerned” about where I am taken, and to whom?
“I have heard that you converse with God,” the Voertrekker said. “That is blasphemous.”
Ah, Clavius thought. A believer. New Luth or even Babst. Not Cult of Elmi. “I speak to Jehovah, Oberst. But I have never claimed he spoke to me.”
“Once you would have been whipped and put in the stocks, kaffir.”
Clavius sighed heavily. Most of his conversations with Voertrekker policemen seemed to end up this way. “Yes, Mynheer,” he said. “Very likely.”
He directed his gaze beyond the standing police colonel to what could be seen through the broad windows of the dirigible’s gondola. The airship had made its landfall. Ahead lay a low shoreline and beyond that the broad plains of the Sea of Grass, blue-green now as the time for spore-flight came near. The savannah winds made quite lovely patterns in the tall grasses. It seemed invisible dancers spun and whirled from the sea to the land, making circling, curving patterns that transformed both sea and grass into a dancing floor.