He expected the Voertrekkerschatz’s reaction of icy contempt. “For the moment that message deserves no answer. Mynheer Klemmer. You have done your honorable duty. Now, Tiegen, attend to him. Then we will all meet in the room of the Starman.”
“Tell me, oh, please. What are they like?”
Broni’s pale face was alight with anxious curiosity. She sat in her wheeled chair, but only because the Healer had threatened the most dire consequences if she left it.
“They are people,” the kaffir serving woman said calmly. “No bigger, no stronger, no different from people here on Voerster.”
“But a girl. A girl. I didn’t know there were space women, too.”
“It stands to reason. They have the same two sexes as we, mynheera.”
“Don’t call me that please.”
The black woman regarded the girl with eyes the color of a clear winter sky. She did not smile. “Very well, Broni. Just as you say.” She busied herself with making up the girl’s bed, another of the high, broad four-posters with which the old house abounded.
The cry of a sentry on the highest widow’s walk facing the valley of Einsamtal could be heard faintly.
“Has the fighting stopped? Was the Starman badly hurt? Tell me what is happening!”
“The Healer said you were to remain very still, mynheera.”
“Broni!”
The girl stamped her foot in irritation. “Why won’t you do as I ask?”
“You ask that I change the way things are on Voerster, mynheera. I would do it if I could, but I cannot.”
“I am sorry,” the girl said. “I truly am.”
“It is not your doing, mynheera.”
“At least, tell me if our people are still fighting with the Highlanders. I want to know if the Starman is hurt, and if he is, is he angry with us, and will he harm us?”
The kaffir looked long at the girl. The tone of command was unmistakably Voertrekker. What a pity, she thought, that if she lives she will become one of them.
Ah, Broni
, she thought.
Right now you are only an adolescent girl, pretty in your frail, half-sexed way.
And like her mother, she was amazingly sensitive to the feelings of those around her. What was it Black Clavius called that?
Empathy
. A talent for sharing another’s most intimate emotions. It was a gift that was at once touching and frightening. It was odd, but the black Wired One had it, too. So it was not a matter of race.
Of course, on Voerster,
everything
was a matter of race.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?”
The kaffir sat on a window seat near Broni’s chair. “The shutters are still closed,” she said, “because the Fonteins are still camped around the
Volkenreiter
. The Luftkapitan was sent in with a message for the mynheera. No, I do not know what it was, but if it came from a Fontein I am certain it is coarse and badly meant.”
‘The Starman is hurt, isn’t he? The Fonteins shot him. Will he die? Mayn’t I see him and the space woman?”
“Live or die, that’s for the Lord to decide, not for me or you to say. You must rest, now. Healer Roark should be heeded.”
Broni’s pale face grew somber. “So that I can be given to a Fontein?”
“I think not, mynheera the Voertrekkersdatter. Not while your mother has an Ehrengraf breath left in her body.”
A house kaffir stood in the open doorway. “You must bring the mynheera. There is a council in the Starman’s room.”
In the gathering evening the low light in the great, gloomy house coupled with shadows to make strange forms and patterns on the ancient walls. Anya Amaya regarded her surroundings with distaste. On New Earth nothing was allowed to become old. Buildings gleamed with plastic cleanliness, roads were smooth as butter, trees and shrubs were trimmed and tidy. On NE, disorder of any sort was a sign that the battle against the empty planet was being lost. One grew accustomed to the light of triple suns, to multiple shadows and the brightness of interior scenes. Here on Voerster it seemed to her that the colonists wallowed in what was old, static, and dark.
She had already noted that Duncan was at home here. Despite his injury, the darkness of the house and the somber inner melancholy of the people appealed to the Thalassan dreamer in him.
Against all good sense and Anya’s warnings, Duncan was on his feet. His wound was tightly bound, but Anya could see that his control of the bleeding was only intermittent. Bloody spots stained the coarse white bandage Duncan had insisted she wind around his leg so that he could stand.
People appeared out of the gloomy galleries and hallways, silent and attentive. The blacks were unfailingly polite to the people from space, but their reserve was a tangible barrier.
What do they expect from us?
Anya wondered.
When a kaffir woman wheeled in a gaunt and pretty blonde girl in an invalid’s chair, Anya Amaya understood.
The great high-and-mighty lady who had so impressed Duncan expected her visitors to bring Dietr Krieg down to do whatever he could for the girl they called Broni. What they were not capable of understanding was that Goldenwing neurocybersurgeons were not heroes who removed malfunctioning organs in daring operations atop computer tables. If these Voertrekkers expected help for the blue-lipped child, the situation outside would have to be improved enormously, and soon.
Anya looked worriedly at Duncan. A flight to orbit-- even assuming they could disperse the savages camped near the sled--might be more than the Master and Commander of the
Gloria Coelis
could manage. Unless it happened soon.
Eliana Ehrengraf came into the room, somehow managing to look like an Amazon warrior in a velvet gown. Anya, insatiably curious about these odd people, had made some inquiries and the replies enraged her. On Voerster, a man of the landed class was referred to as “Mynheer,” but the proper form for a woman of the same class was “mynheera,” without the honorific capitalization.
In a society based on land tenure, the most potent title was “Kraalheer.” Even the president-for-life of Voerster was sometimes referred to as the “Kraalheer of Voerster.” Eliana Ehrengraf Voerster, Anya surmised, had longer bloodlines even than the Voertrekker-Praesident. She was, in fact, one of the very few women landholders on the planet. Yet her title was properly “kraalheera.”
Proud as she obviously was, Eliana seemed at home with the slights put upon her--and presumably all women--on this benighted world.
With Eliana came the old astronomer and an armed escort of two large black men. Was the situation really so grave as that? Anya Amaya wondered.
The kraalheeren Eliana went straight to Duncan and bowed her head in a gesture of respect. “Starman, I present my daughter and heiress. Broni Ehrengraf Voerster.”
The kaffir attendant woman wheeled the girl forward and she made no effort whatsoever to prevent her trying to rise so that she could show Duncan the same respect her mother had done. Duncan thought: These are a formal people. They would be ashamed to die in a disorderly manner.
To his shocked surprise he caught a strong nuance of comprehension from Eliana Ehrengraf. She had come very near to hearing his thought. The woman was a natural empath.
To Broni he said, “Remain seated, mynheera Broni.” He took her slender hand and held it. The girl was regarding him worshipfully. From her radiated the empathic signal, even stronger than her mother’s sending.
He smiled and said, “You are rare people.”
The large figure of Black Clavius appeared in the stone arch framing the metal door. Duncan knew him for a Wired One instantly. This was the marooned Starman of whom he had been told.
Clavius regarded the newcomers of his own kind with sudden tears in his eyes.
“Lord,”
he murmured,
“it is good of You to let me live to see this day. ‘I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.’ When Your Jews wrote the Book of Numbers You must have known I would need it to express my fraility...”
Then he said, “I am Clavius, Duncan. Once a syndic of the Goldenwing
Nepenthe
.”
Anya said tersely, “I have never seen a syndic who chose the beach.”
Clavius regarded the Sailing Master sadly. “My fellows aboard
Nepenthe
were intolerant of my habit of speaking with God, Sailing Master.” He essayed a rueful smile. “We are not all tolerant, Sailing Master, nor all perfect. Perhaps you have noticed.”
“He has you there, Anya,” Duncan said. To Clavius, he said, “Have you had enough of life ashore?”
“I suspect it has had enough of me,” Black Clavius said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.
“We will talk of it,” Duncan said. He spoke to Eliana: “How many are outside?”
“Thirty. Perhaps as many as forty.”
“Are they soldiers?”
Eliana smiled tiredly. “They think they are.”
“They have weapons,” Anya said. “Therefore, for purposes of this discussion they are soldiers.”
“I fear that is true,” Osbertus Kloster said in a tremulous voice.
Tiegen Roark arrived, breathless, from two floors above. “They are settling down for the night in tents near the airship, mynheera. They have pickets out.”
Eliana said, “The Six Giants are all in the sky. Two will set by midnight. By two o’clock two more will be down and the night will be dark.” She looked straight at Duncan. “I am told that you are keeping yourself well by some power you have, but that it will not last. Is that true?”
“It is,” Duncan said.
“And that there is a skilled physician aboard the Goldenwing.”
“Yes.”
“Will that machine carry us all?”
“Seven. It can carry seven,” Anya said. “No more.” Somehow she did not want Eliana Ehrengraf aboard
Glory
.
“Seven and a child?”
“We can manage that,” Anya said grudgingly. She looked at Duncan. “But there is Han Soo.”
“A crewman who died during the voyage here,” Duncan said. “I owe him a grave. He had a dread of being cast into space. He was an old and honorable man.”
“Then we must provide what is needed,” Eliana said. She faced Duncan squarely, and suddenly it was as though they were alone in the shadowed room. “If my daughter does not receive the kind of treatment available on your vessel, she will die. Not tomorrow, but soon.”
Duncan looked into the wide, dark eyes of a fellow empath and smiled his melancholy smile. “Then we must provide what is needed,” he said, and took Eliana by the hand. For the first time in his life, Duncan Kr was in love.
The Voertrekker-Praesident, sitting behind his polished slab of a table, regarded the Starman with interest. He dismissed Oberst Transkei with a silent wave of his hand. The Trekkerpolizei, concerned for the Praesident’s safety, withdrew frowning.
Ian Voerster said, “The warders tell me you are a Frenchman. I have never seen a Frenchman before. Are you unique?”
Jean Marq sat heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He had never before in his life been restrained from doing almost exactly as he chose to do. Being in custody was almost a pleasant experience for him. For the first time he was not burdened with decisions. He had been looking distractedly at the Zulu weapons on the wall above the Voertrekker-Praesident’s table. He knew what they were because he had seen similar ones in the Louvre or the Pompidou many years ago. There was a streak of venality in Jean Marq and he estimated that the relics must be worth a million new francs, possibly more. Yet they were removed from Earth, from France, from the Louvre and the Pompidou by light-years of space and time-dilated centuries. He shivered with a sense of his isolation from his roots.
“France has always been the most civilized nation on Planet Earth,” he said, almost defiantly. “In that sense all Frenchmen are unique. A man of the world would know that.” Duncan would be proud of him for challenging this offworld bourgeois authoritarian. The Thalassan, peasant that he was born, brought forth the qualities and bearing of an aristocrat when needed. It was one of the things that made him of such value to the
Gloria Coelis
syndicate.
The Voertrekker-Praesident steepled his fingers and scrutinized the hostage even more closely than before. It seemed remarkable to Ian Voerster that here before him sat a lordly representative of Earth, of the home-world of all Men. And yet, despite his airs and mysterious skills, he was quite as helpless as any kaffir.
Would that I could dominate the animals of the Planetia so easily
, Voerster thought.
But wait. Perhaps matters were not so simple as they appeared. This “Frenchman” had fallen quite easily into his hands. Perhaps too easily? Ian Voerster was a conspiratorial man. Was there something here that was hidden, and yet sent neural messages to his inner self? Black Clavius had always aroused this sort of suspicion in the Voertrekker-Praesident--a feeling that something was going inexorably awry out there beyond the range of a virtuous man’s understanding.
“You understand that you are a prisoner? And a hostage for the good behavior of your fellow syndics?” Ian Voerster kept his voice calm, even friendly.
“I do,” Jean Marq said. “I also know that you will have cause to regret what you have done. It may well be a thousand years before another Goldenwing chooses to visit the Luyten Sun. There is nothing here but brutes and truce-breakers.”
Ian’s reddish eyebrows arched so pronouncedly that they seemed almost to touch his high hairline. “I was not aware there was any truce between your people and mine, Mynheer Syndic,” he said.
“Or any war, either,” Jean Marq said calmly. “Colonials do not make Starmen into hostages. At least not until colonial science can produce something as necessary as a starship,
Monsieur le President
.”
“Is that a French form of address, Mynheer Marq? I am genuinely interested in the quaint customs of out-of-date civilizations.”
“Why have I been detained?” Jean Marq demanded, veering suddenly to near-explosive anger. He was developing a very great dislike for this pale man with his sparse fair hair, his thin lips, and small, alert eyes--like those of a pig rooting for truffles, he thought with a wild impulse to laugh aloud. Where had this rustic creature found the courage to challenge--and capture--a Wired Starman?