The airship captain rounded exasperatedly on the boy and would have reprimanded him had he not been cut off by the unexpected intrusion of Tiegen Roark who, until now, had not spoken.
“I will go with you, Klemmer,” he said.
Eliana laid a hand on his sleeve. “Are you certain of this? It could be more dangerous than flying to the Golden-wing, Tiegen.”
“I don’t think so, mynheera. I would give much to see what wonders a Starman physician can perform. But up there I would serve no purpose. On board the
Volkenreiter
I can be of help.” He looked across at the Luftkapitan. “If you agree, Mynheer Klemmer.”
Klemmer nodded admiringly. He had never liked Tiegen Roark, but the Healer’s decision was an act of courage-- the paramount Voertrekker virtue.
Black Clavius said, “I should stay with the kaffirs.”
“I want you with us,” Duncan said. “To help Anya in case I begin to fall apart. My fever is rising and I may not make it all the way.”
Anya Amaya said, “I object to you carrying a truce flag out to those bastards who shot you. I will do it.”
“Forgive me, mynheera,” the kaffir maid said calmly, “but if you do you will get nothing but a gang rape. It is their way.”
“It is true, mynheera Anya,” Osbertus Kloster said in a hollow, trembling voice. “Women--that is women without status on this world--are treated without respect.”
“Christ,” Anya said explosively, “I can use a weapon as well as any man.”
Duncan said, “What we want is the permission to bury Han Soo, Anya. Not to start a pitched battle. I will carry the truce message. If I do not return, I order you and Clavius to get these people aboard
Glory
in any way you can.” He forced himself to his feet and stood for a moment, gathering his strength. He looked at the faces surrounding him and tried, as ship captains were supposed to do, to give them confidence. To Eliana he said, “How long before your husband’s people reach us?”
“The weather is breaking. It will clear by morning. They will be here by then.” She looked at Klemmer. “I apologize to you, Mynheer Luftkapitan, for the trials you have had to face on my behalf. The chances are that you will intercept the Voertrekker-Praesident’s force somewhere between here and Voersterstaad. I will give you a letter to my husband. It will absolve you of any blame for our flight from Voertrekkerhoem. By his own standards Ian Voerster is a fair man. I do not think you will lose your command. Is
Volkenreiter
able to fly?”
“Well enough, mynheera.”
“And you, Osbertus? What will you do?”
“I am terrified, Cousin. But I would not miss this adventure for all Voerster and the Six Giants thrown in.”
Eliana looked long at Duncan Kr and then said, “Then let’s begin.”
At dusk the funeral cortege left the safety of the manor house and filed past the simple grave of the
lumpe
Airshipman Blier, down the meadow toward the glade near a mountain stream where Ehrengraf kaffirs had dug another grave in the bitter soil. The Fonteins, grim and silent, stood on the ridge at the foot of the valley, armed, immobile, and watchful.
In the windows of the manor house could be seen ambiguous figures over what appeared to be weapons protruding into the misty evening air. The cortege walked slowly down the valley to the
Glory
’s shuttle, parked near the moored
Volkenreiter
. Tiegen Roark and Osbertus Kloster’s boy, Buele, bore the woven grass sarcophagus on their shoulders. It seemed a light load. Duncan carried a staff with a white cloth that snapped and crackled in the wind off the Shieldwall.
Eliana Ehrengraf, as kraalheera of Einsamberg, walked at the head of the column, giving the ceremony and interment legitimacy by her presence. Over her Voertrekker gown she wore the embroidered overcloak of the Kraalheeren, a garment that announced her rank and duties to all the valley.
Under the truce flag and in his halting Afrikaans, Duncan had explained to Georg Fontein that Han Soo’s corpse must be retrieved from the shuttle, laid in the grass sarcophagus that the lady of Einsamberg had so graciously caused to be made, and then, after suitable funerary incantations, put into the ground. “My comrade’s soul will rest with that of your companion in this valley. Han Soo was an honorable man who died very far from home. We thank you for allowing us to give him proper burial.”
As Eliana had pointed out, the Fonteins were brutes but not primitives. At dusk, they stood on the ridge, silent and staring at the Ehrengraf kraalheera, her servants, and the pair from the stars.
At the shuttle, the cortege paused while Tiegen and Buele followed Anya Amaya into the craft. As the time lengthened, the Fonteins began to whisper restlessly among themselves, making a show of their weapons.
“What are they doing in there, sah?” one of Georg Fontein’s
lumpen
whispered. “Why are they taking so long?”
“Honneger, go down there to the star machine and see what they are doing,” Georg ordered another of his men.
But as the
lumpe
began to run across the meadow, the people emerged from the shuttle. This time three carried the sarchophagus. The Starman Han Soo had been put into the grass coffin and brought out into the rainy evening.
Bright light flooded the meadow as the shuttle’s landing lights came on. The Fonteins were startled, but held their places. Had the Starpeople brought weapons out of the machine? Georg wondered. The wounded Starman had pledged his honor that there were no weapons aboard the starcraft. Fontein was coming to believe that the Starmen lacked the courage to fight. If they had both weapons and honor they would have fought when the Starman was hit. Since they had not, and did not now, Georg began to think that a sudden attack on the funeral party might be profitable, truce flag or no. He stood, undecided, as the cortege reached the newly prepared grave by the river.
The large kaffir stood and made music on his balichord--sad and mournful music that was much the same as he had sent down the valley while Eigen Fontein burned.
Georg waited, undecided.
At the grave site Duncan planted the truce flag. He could see the Fonteins’ restlessness. They fondled their weapons, muttering and whispering among themselves.
Duncan had brought Han Soo’s
Book of Common Prayer
. Old Han had been a Christian of many years’ standing. Once he had confessed to Duncan that he had joined his first syndicate because of the Muslim pogroms that had still swept China in the Celestial’s time. “As a follower of our Lord Jesus,” he explained with characteristic irony, “I became fair game for the believers in Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.”
Duncan, who was not a Christian--or a believer in anything but the prodigious nature of Nature--had seen religious wars in the colonies. He could only imagine how much more violent and intolerant they had been in the last days of the jihad and the Exodus. But what filled him with wonder was that Han Soo had stretched his uptime years into centuries. The old Celestial had been an alabaster image, a relic of Earth’s long-vanished history. Duncan felt in his deepest being that they might at this moment be burying the oldest human being who had ever lived.
Despite their tense situation, Duncan had selected some of Han Soo’s favorite verses. The old man had always preferred the English
Book of Common Prayer
over the Bible because it was, he said, “so much more civilized.”
‘“Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’“
“Amen to that,” whispered Anya Amaya.
“‘From envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us.’“
Black Clavius raised his face to the deepening night and closed his eyes. “‘Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’“
Otto Klemmer, raised a strict New Lutheran, recognized the verse from First Corinthians, and whispered a heartfelt prayer. He felt nothing for the alien he had helped to lower into the grave, but Black Clavius’ sonorous prophecy made him think how near to death they all stood, here under the hostile gaze of these Planetian marauders.
Duncan wished there were more time to speak to Han Soo as they planted him in this alien soil. He wished he could explain to the old man that though it was not the misty valley of the Yangtze River, it was still a part of that same creation.
You may only be dust and energy, old friend,
he thought,
the stuff of stars long dead and awaiting rebirth. If you are sentient, if you exist at all as any part of the man who was Han Soo, then you know and there is little I can add.
“’O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.’“ He closed the book and nodded to the others. “Fill the grave now.”
Eliana watched the dirt fall on the grass sarcophagus with a certain revulsion. On Voerster not only the Planetians cremated their dead. Some instinctive taboo, brought on the Goldenwing
Milagro
, kept Voersterians from rites such as these. She glanced at Duncan and Amaya. She had imagined that as travelers in the vastness of interstellar space, they would set their dead adrift among the stars as men once did in the seas of the homeworld.
Duncan met her eyes. “It was Han Soo’s own choice,” he said.
Anya Amaya, sensing Eliana’s inner shudder, said in a tight voice, “This is
our
way, great lady.”
“Enough,” Duncan said. “How much time remaining before auto-launch, Anya?”
“Three minutes.”
As the grave was smoothed by the Kaffirs, Duncan said in a low voice to Klemmer and Tiegen, “Go now. We will follow.”
The airshipman and Tiegen Roark made an obeisance to the fresh grave and began to walk unhurriedly toward the moored
Volkenreiter
. They cast long shadows across the meadow as they moved through the lights shining from the shuttle,
Duncan sensed the uncertainty among the Planetians on the ridge. “They will move soon,” Anya said. “Can you feel it?”
“Yes.”
Unhurriedly, he placed Han Soo’s prayerbook on the grave. “Now,” he said quietly.
Anya led the way in the direction of the shuttle. She was followed by Buele and the Astronomer-Select, then by Eliana. Farther up the meadow, Tiegen and Otto Klemmer had reached the grounded airship.
That set the Planetians into motion. Someone on the ridge gave a shout and they started down, waving their weapons.
The light vanished, leaving only a star-shot darkness.
“Run!”
Duncan shouted. He began to lope, searing flashes of pain burning through his thigh. He stumbled, felt the grass under his hands. Someone lifted him. It was Buele. They ran on until they reached the shuttle.
Beyond the dark wedge-shape the vast soft bulk of the
Volkenreiter
was floating upward in silence.
The Fonteins began, to shoot their blunderbuss shotguns. Duncan heard projectiles whining and ricocheting from the ceramic heat shielding on the shuttle’s nose. He could smell the familiar ozone tang of the magnetic resonance engines starting. As he pushed Buele into the hatch and then fell sprawling himself in the cargo bay, he saw the spectroscopic rainbow of the first pulses from the thruster nozzles. He heard Anya’s call:
“Is the hatch clear?”
He answered her.
“Clear, Anya! Clear!”
and the shuttle lifted.
The Claw was a long talon of land descending from the northeastern most coast of the Planetia to the planetary ocean of the Luyten Sea. Standing on a rocky promontory five hundred meters above the crashing surf, Beltram Denebeim searched the star-lined horizon with an ancient brass telescope.
The sky over The Claw was clear for the first time in days, though the wind buffeted Denebeim and lashed the sea into a maelstrom. The sea-spume seemed to glow with a light of its own in the darkness below. The waves striking the continent here had rolled across half a world of empty sea.
Denebeim’s family had run hornheads and farmed The Claw for uncounted generations as dependents of the Fonteins, whose holding lay three hundred kilometers west and nineteen hundred meters above the Denebeim Kraal. From his father Beltram had inherited a single high range where hornhead could be pastured, and The Claw from crest to shore, where boats could shelter. Though the living was poor and the land inhospitable, to the barrel-shaped Planetian standing on the cliffs, The Claw had a rare grand beauty.
Starlight illuminated the raging sea. Luyten 726 lay in a thickly populated region of the galactic spiral arm. Bright stars filled the sky. Denebeim had never seen moonlight, but he would have found a clear night with a full moon in the sky of Earth familiar. His heavy-lidded eyes had superb night vision and acuity, and at the moment he was searching the Luyten Sea for the shape of his elder son’s fishing sloop, due to return to the safety of The Claw this night.
Denebeim was a superstitious man without education. Only the sons of the wealthiest Planetian Kraalheeren went south to university, across the Gulf of Pretoria. And little enough of value they learned there, Beltram Denebeim thought as he watched the sea. His strong son Orrin was worth a dozen of the highborn swaggerers with their arrogant ways and saber-scarred cheeks.
For a Planetian of Denebeim’s caste, life was harsh and simple. There was scarcely air to breathe in the highlands, let alone soil enough to raise proper crops. A man lived with his family, replacing each worn-out wife with the next, sometimes grieving as he lighted the funeral pyres, and always only just scraping a bare living from the barren plateau between the Sea of Grass and the Northern Ice. The hornheads struggled to survive, but like all necrogenes, they refused to multiply. All the native life on Planet Voerster had a maddening way of staying in almost perfect balance with the planetary ecology.