Around the observatory buildings Osbertus Kloster’s kaffirs performed a never-ending labor, building larger and ever larger parabolic radio dishes of steel and wire. The discovery of new high-grade chrome deposits on the penal lands of the Sabercut Peninsula had turned ordinary iron into good quality steel, making the larger dishes possible.
The beds had also been a source of an academic triumph for Osbertus personally. Several years before the discovery, he had presented a rather daring paper at Pretoria stating his belief that in ages past epochal changes were caused by Luyten 726 being a triple star system. The brown dwarf theory again, but with a difference. Perturbations of the system caused by the millennial approaches of one or more of the dwarfs caused, he contended, periodic bombardments of Voerster by large meteors, some of which were the source of the chrome and other rare (on Voerster) elements to be found on the Sabercut.
His fellow academics had first sneered at him and then censured him for presenting a “frivolous” paper. They had refused to reverse their motion of censure until commanded to do so by Ian Voerster, who had decided to give Cousin Osbertus the sinecure of Sternhoem.
The Voertrekker-Praesident had sourly asked him if his theory that bombardment from space was caused by the brown dwarfs was
really
anything more than a guess. It was a guess, but an inspired one.
Radio astronomy became Osbertus Kloster’s true love and obsession. The work with the radio dishes continued to open before him a vast panorama of the universe in terms no Voertrekker had imagined since the destruction of the books and computers in the Rebellion.
The dishes outdid the old refracting telescope and were first to discover the approach of the new Goldenwing, though it was now visible as a streak on a photographic plate. In a week’s time the
Gloria
would be clearly seen in the Sternhoem refractor, and in two weeks, seen with the naked eye in Voerster’s wind-scoured sky.
Having completed his nightly observations, Osbertus Kloster now developed his latest set of g!ass-and-silver-nitrate plates. The Goldenwing was still beyond the orbit of Drache, but the spectrograph of the light reflected from the starship (How the hectares of golden sails must gleam, he thought.) was still blue-shifted. This meant that the vessel was closing Voerster at a goodly percentage of the speed of light.
The signals coming from the Goldenwing were steadily growing stronger and more distinct. It sent a thrill through him to realize that in the far reaches of the solar system there was a young person capable of understanding his clumsy attempts at Anglic--the lingua franca of space. Hunched over his desk in the cavernous dark of the observatory dome, listening to the whir and click of the telescope’s ancient equatorial drive, he told himself that he was the most favored of men upon Planet Voerster.
Cousin Ian would be pleased with the new ephemeris. It meant that the beasts ordered so long ago for the farms of Voerster were at last at hand, and who knew what other trade treasures the Goldenwing might have in her cavernous holds? But Ian would give no sign of pleasure or anticipation because he was a dour, dark-minded man who feared another disappointment.
Mynheer Osbertus Kloster wondered what Black Clavius would say when he learned that Wired Men and Women, people like himself from the near stars, would soon walk the soil of Voerster. Perhaps he already knew, Osbertus thought, leaning back in his chair and gnawing absently the pencil he held. He had always suspected that the
Nepenthe
syndicate had marooned Clavius because he had extrasensory powers. But that was only conjecture. The
Nepenthe
had arrived unheralded and departed without a Search. She would not be seen again over Voerster for centuries, perhaps millennia. Osbertus wondered why Clavius had remained on Voerster among the kaffirs. It would be a natural thing to seek one’s own kind, even among the stars. But the truth was that Clavius was slightly mad.
But, Osbertus thought firmly, all Starmen were peculiar. Clavius was the only Starman the Astronomer-Select had ever actually met face-to-face. But how could Goldenwing crewmen not be strange when they carried embedded in their skulls a terrifying sign of the supernatural?
Clavius wandered the savannahs with his Book of Gospels, his knapsack of homeopathic cures, his musical instrument, and his deep sonorous voice. He was revered in the homelands, where the blacks called him “Starkaffir.” Even in Voersterstaad mere was a kind of clique among the sons and daughters of the elite, devoted to meeting with Clavius and listening to his outlandish stories. The young mynheeren gathered in the parks and commons to hear Black Clavius preach, sing, and spin tales from offworld. Many of the young people were also followers of the Cult of Elmi. Shocking, really, thought Osbertus. A kaffir cult, a kaffir Starman, and the young of the best families on Voerster. Where would it end? he wondered.
Osbertus sometimes attended these meetings incognito. He regarded the marooned star sailor as a perpetually replenished well of information about a vast life he, Osbertus Kloster, could only imagine. And he always made certain that Sternhoem was generous with its hospitality when Clavius appeared. The aging astronomer, even more than the young fashionables, yearned to know about the lands in the sky.
Osbertus pushed the green-shaded lamp away and rubbed at the bridge of his ample nose. All around him was the echoing silence of the observatory dome, catwalks lighted at intervals by red night-lamps. The astronomer’s desk was of wood, real wood. When a rare near-tree was felled on Voerster, the logs went to the cabinetmakers of Voersterstaad where artisans cut and polished it until it was almost indistinguishable from the wood brought by the original colonists. Earth wood existed on Voerster only in tiny bits, now used for jewelry. But Osbertus Kloster’s desk was from Earth, brought aboard the
Milagro
, along with the Machtstuhf, now in the Great Room of the Kongresshalle in Voersterstaad.
The desk belonged in a museum, and Kloster’s great-great-grandfather, a previous holder of the Sternhoem sinecure, had pridefully placed it on display in the grand foyer of the observatory. But when Osbertus became Astronomer-Select, he had had the desk carefully moved upstairs to the base of his beloved telescope so that the two artifacts Osbertus cared about could share one space.
The telescope was shut down and unmoving and had been since the tenth night-hour. It troubled the astronomer that the telescope was so lightly used. But the fact was that the government of the Voertrekker State was penurious and indifferent to astronomy--to all science, except agronomy. Even medicine on the planet progressed--when it did progress--in the footsteps of the plant geneticists.
The native animals of Voerster were all necrogenes. It was interesting to speculate how things would change after the shuttle of the
Gloria Coelis
unloaded ten thousand or more frozen placental mammals for the farms and kraals of Voerster. And wasn’t it odd that the word the mynheeren used to denote their estates was a word the homeworld Zulu had once used to describe the enclosures where they confined their cattle? Such matters intrigued the Astronomer-Select. Pondering was his avocation.
He looked thoughtfully into the upper darkness of the dome. The long tube of the refractor seemed to vanish into the gloom. Osbertus had caused Buele to hand-crank the dome closed because who knew what damage might be done by the night to the twenty-six-inch objective lens far above his head? Of course no harm had come to the telescope in all this time, but if--if some ill befell the irreplaceable glass, what would Osbertus Kloster do? Suicide as a form of apology was not unknown on Voerster. Osbertus shuddered.
The astronomer had nearly reached the age of retirement. Sixty was a goodly age on Voerster, where the years were 510 days long. He grimaced as he considered. How typically Voertrekker.
We do not live the short traditional years of Earth, but the ponderous years of Luyten 726
I
4.
Five hundred ten and an awkward fraction days long. Osbertus could not even begin to imagine what it would be like to live on a world where a year was a miserly 365 days long, and there were real seasons. On Voerster there were none. Spring was cold, summer was also cold, and fall was colder still. Winter was frozen. Voerster was not a kind world, but it had its own sort of spartan beauty. Clavius said it was a world to build character.
The astronomer looked again at the sheaf of calculations he had painstakingly completed using the same arithmetic the First Landers had brought with them from home. He sighed, dreaming of the computers he read about in the old texts. We have the theories but not the means, he thought sadly, returning to his labor.
By his revised calculations, and always assuming the ship approaching the outermost gas giant in the system would choose to slow at a constant rate, the
Gloria Coelis
would be in orbit around Voerster in two months, three days, and ten hours.
What changes would the Goldenwing bring? Mynheer Osbertus had always been the butt of criticism because of his yearning for change. Cousin Ian,
The
Voerster (his family title, which he bore in addition to his political title of The Voertrekker and his legal rank of Voertrekker-Praesident), quite disliked changes and greatly relished the power of disapproval. He believed with all his God-fearing heart that dissatisfaction led to brashness, arrogance, hauteur, vainglory, and self-love. These qualities resulted in sinfulness, ineptitude, and wickedness. So Church and chaplain taught, and so the Voertrekker-Praesident believed.
Osbertus had small brashness, little arrogance, and despite being a mynheer, almost no hauteur whatever. A certain vainglory and self-love he could not deny. But he wished that The Voerster could find it in his heart to be more tolerant of a poor relation. More than once Cousin Ian had threatened to close down Sternhoem. But for the intercession of Cousin Eliana, he quite possibly might have actually done it. He had not yet forgiven Osbertus for his personal disappointment in the
Nepenthe
affair. He probably never would.
Osbertus spoke aloud, “But a Voertrekker who has discovered
two
Goldenwings in a lifetime surely has a right to a
bit
of vainglory?” His cherubic face twisted into a comic opera laugh. “No?” he said to the darkness. “Then a kind word, surely.”
He heard a noise at the door, which stood at the end of a long, helical steel ladder attached to the outside of the building. It was Buele, his helper and general handyman, come with Osbertus’ late night cup of steaming,
greena
-spiked kava. Buele was not a clever person, but he had a good heart. Osbertus had rescued him from an asylum, where the mentally inept were used for farm labor, and none too gently--since, the resident minister had pointed out,’They feel very little.”
“It is time again to signal Voertrekkerhoem on the telegraph, Buele,” Osbertus Kloster said. “I want Cousin Eliana to know that the Goldenwing will arrive when I said it would arrive.” He wanted all the news about the Goldenwing to come from him. Was
that
vainglorious? he wondered innocently. Why should he not be in love with Eliana Ehrengraf? Every other mynheer in the world was.
He knew that it would be the sleepy duty clerk who would receive any message from Sternhoem, and that he would file it to be read by the Voertrekkerschatz in the morning. Ian was in Voersterstaad, conscientiously fulfilling duties he loathed.
But Buele did so love to work the telegraph key. For all that he was feebleminded, he knew the code and the Astronomer-Select of Voerster did not.
The name
Buele
had been given the boy when Osbertus took him from the asylum, and though it was a cruelty, it suited him. It was a cruelty because it suited him. The word meant “lump” or “boil.” And that was what Buele was, a lump on the reputation of Sternhoem, and a boil on Osbertus Kloster’s patience. It was Buele who spilled precious photographic plates and smashed them, Buele who dropped a stone maul into the cogs of the telescope drive and put it out of action for seven weeks in midwinter--the time of best seeing. Buele frightened the landgirls on the nearby kraal of the deKupyers and was very nearly arrested by the Trekkerpolizei. The list of Buele’s faults and omissions was long, but Osbertus was still glad of his presence.
Osbertus was a lonely man with a reputation for being featherbrained and even, on occasion, a bit subversive. Buele was company. Buele was, in fact, the best Osbertus could expect.
Which is odd,
he thought.
I am, after all, a cousin of the Voertrekker-Praesident
. The Voerster acknowledged the relationship. It probably explained why Osbertus was allowed to have opinions about the inner troubles of the Voerster family.
Osbertus thought of the life that was led in the vast cold rooms of the Voertrekkerhoem as “the family darkness.” On Voerster, marriages were alliances rather than love matches. A dynastic marriage was rather rudely spoken of by the kaffirs as “blood-breeding.” The land went with the blood and the land was all, even though there was a whole planet to be populated.
There had been blood-breeding between the Voerster family and the Ehrengrafs for five generations. The dark and beautiful Eliana Ehrengraf had lived for half of her twenty-two years--the long years of Voerster--at Voertrekkerhoem, wife and consort to the Voertrekker-Praesident. But the match had not been a fruitful one. The Voerster’s sons had died in childhood, of a genetic fault that might have been his, or Eliana’s--who could say? Their only living child, the golden Broni, was tubercular, given to long spells of sickness, and so fey as to be suspected by the
lumpen
of witchcraft. If she were truly a witch, Osbertus thought, then why did she not heal herself?
Osbertus loved the fragile Broni, and for as long as he could remember, he had been In love with the dark vision of her mother Eliana, whose melancholy beauty should tear any man’s heart and did, all save her bitter husband’s.