Glory (19 page)

The Voerster said, “Transkei told me what you said there.
’And they showed Galileo the instruments
.’ You are learned.”

Clavius fixed Ian Voerster with a look of infinite sadness. “For a kaffir?” he said.

“Yes,” Ian said. “For a kaffir.”

On the wall behind the Voertrekker-Praesident was mounted a Zulu impee-leader’s assegai and shield.
They must be two thousand Earth-years old
. Black Clavius thought. The painted bars of the long-dead warrior’s rank were still sharply limned on the desiccated cowhide.

“An ancestor of mine was a Boer scout at Rorke’s Drift. He took that shield and assegai that day,” Ian Voerster said.

“Long, long ago,” Clavius said.

“We have long, long memories on Planet Voerster.”

“I have come to understand that, Voertrekker,” Clavius said.

“Good. We may begin to understand one another.”

“I hope so, Mynheer.”

Ian Voerster leaned back in his large chair. “What a kaffir you are, Black Clavius. Looking at you--one might take you for a Zulu.” It was a compliment, of sorts. The ancient Zulu of Africa on Planet Earth were the only kaffirs Voertrekkers respected.

“I fear not, Voertrekker,” Clavius said. “I was born in a place called South Carolina. There are no Zulus there. Long ago.”

“That phrase keeps coming up when kaffir Clavius is the subject of discussion,” Ian said. “How old are you really?”

“I am sixty.”

“On Earth, how many years have passed since you were born?”

“Ah, that is a different matter, Mynheer. Many years have passed on Earth. You asked me how old I was. I took that to mean how many years of life have I experienced. The answer to that is sixty.”

Ian Voerster’s light eyes transfixed Clavius. “Give or take a few.”

“Yes, Voertrekker.”

“The men of the Goldenwing that is coming. The syndicate. How old are they?”

“I cannot be sure. But I would imagine they are in their thirties, forties. Perhaps older than that. There are Starmen of all ages,” Clavius said.
Lord
, he wondered,
is he going to fall into the immortality game with me now?
It almost always happened. Landsmen thought the Wired Ones lived forever. “The question is almost meaningless.”

“It is far from meaningless, kaffir Clavius. It means a - great deal. It always will.”

“On Voerster,” Clavius said quietly.

“You are
on
Voerster, Starman.”

“So I am, Voertrekker,” Clavius admitted.

Ian Voerster stood abruptly and began pacing the narrow room. He wore a dashiki. The warm-weather quasi caftan designed for the climate of Africa on Earth had been modified with cheet-skin and ebray leather to serve as an overgarment in this chilly climate.
But what a strange lot we humans are
, Clavius thought.
We adopt what we like from those we despise.
He refrained from sharing that observation with the Lord. Lately the Lord seemed bored with Black Clavius.

“You saw my daughter,” Ian Voerster said abruptly.

“Yes.” Clavius could not help but add: “Before my unexpected trip south.”

Voerster ignored the tiny insolence. “Well?” Impatiently.

Clavius said carefully, “She does not have tuberculosis, Voertrekker.”

“Of course she hasn’t. Do you take me for a fool?” The Voerster returned to his desk and sat down, spreading his well-kept hands on the polished rock surface. “According to my cousin, the Astronomer-Select, the Goldenwing should be achieving orbit within thirty days. Always assuming that Osbertus has not made some gross error, Voerster is in store for some remarkable changes.” He fixed his pale eyes on Black Clavius. “Goldenwings change things simply by appearing, kaffir. Seen from another perspective--yours, for example--the changes may appear to be small. But I assure you that they are profound.”

“Yes, Mynhear,” Clavius said. “I can accept that.”

“Thank you, Clavius,” The Voerster said drily. “I do not refer, in case you are wondering, to the cargoes the Goldenwing will bring. Though I do not underestimate the impact of the goods my great-uncle Alfried ordered. By no means.” He held an index finger to his thin lips in what was a characteristic gesture. “There are those at Pretoria University’s Faculty of Husbandry who are concerned about the effect a large invasion of Terrestrial genotypes will have on Planet Voerster’s ecology--

“But that won’t be my concern, will it, kaffir? I will be long buried before that kind of problem becomes acute.” He looked at Clavius with an expression of such speculation that it was almost an expression of cupidity. “You and yours, kaffir, take a different view. It is quite possible that
you
will still be alive in that far-off time.”

“Not unless I am taken once more aboard a starship, Mynheer, and then returned here on some future voyage,” Clavius said.

“Ah, of course. The paradoxes of time dilation,” Ian Voerster said. “So difficult for a mere downworlder to grasp with any true understanding.” The pallid eyes grew suddenly as cold as the sky over the Southern Ice. “Tell me, kaffir. Is there any possibility that the syndicate now aboard the
Gloria Coelis
is the same as the
Nostromo
syndicate with whom my great uncle Alfried dealt?”

“No, Mynheer. Time has passed uptime. Perhaps a great deal of it,” Black Clavius said cautiously. “Until I came to Voerster, I had never heard of Goldenwing
Nostromo
. It is that way in space, Mynheer. There are probably fewer than a dozen Goldenwings still sailing, but they learn of one another only if and when word is circulated by downworlders during a port call.
Nostromo’s
syndicate quite probably sold your great-uncle’s contract to another syndicate, and that to still another until it became the property of the
Glory
, hers to fulfill. As to how long ago all this took place uptime--well, Mynheer, if you will forgive me, the question is meaningless. The answer could depend on where the winds of space have carried the
Glory
, for how long, and at what speeds.”

Ian Voerster leaned forward slightly, betraying an intensity that disturbed Black Clavius deeply. On Voerster
any
anxious Voertrekker could mean trouble. And when the Voertrekker in question was the hereditary leader of this benighted society, the trouble could be bitter. “The Rebellion set our sciences back by centuries, kaffir. Am I correct in assuming that technological progress on Earth and the other colony worlds has not suffered such setbacks?”

“Probably not, Mynheer. But the march of technology is a sporadic thing. No two worlds live at the same pace.”

“I understand. But medical technology?”

“The same assumptions apply, Mynheer.”

“But they will have a physician aboard the Goldenwing.”

“Almost certainly.”

“A wiser, better educated man--a more able man than our Tiegen Roark. That surely.”

Clavius saw the danger signals flying, but knew not how to avoid the pitfalls ahead.

“I want an answer, kaffir.”

“A Goldenwing surgeon would be more skilled than a Healer of Voerster,” Clavius said carefully. “But if you are thinking of Broni, Mynheer, do not expect too much. One would have to do a proper diagnosis, and that would almost certainly have to be performed aboard. And a voyage to orbit for someone as ill as the mynheera Broni could be extremely dangerous. The syndicate might simply refuse to take such a chance. I cannot say.”

“They will do what I say must be done, kaffir Clavius. I am not easily dissuaded.” He pressed a buzzer on his desk and stood again. “I want you to think about it. And to consider how you might best serve me--and mynheera the Voertrekkersdatter.”

He walked around the desk as Clavius rose from the stool on which he had been sitting. “You shall be my guest here at Voertrekkerhoem, Clavius, while you devote yourself to the pursuit I suggest. You will do this, of course--”

“Because, like Galileo,” Clavius said with deep melancholy, “I have seen the instruments.”

“Exactly, kaffir. And because a starship is coming and when it departs you want most desperately to be on it. We both understand your situation to perfection. Rest assured that I shall be protective of your Starman’s ethics.” The Voerster was heavily ironic.

The door opened and the lance corporal stood ready for orders.

“Take my special guest, the Starman Black Clavius, to Leutnant Bostik in the visitor’s quarters,” The Voerster said. “Instruct the leutnant that Starman Clavius is to want for nothing.”

Except my freedom
, thought Clavius.
So I do what I must do. It is not a question of ethics, Lord, but one of survival.

Clinging to the fabric bulkhead of the bridge, Mira regarded the large ones. All were lying in their nests, thinking together with the queen-who-was-not-alive. The great queen had her paws on their heads. One of Mira’s kittens who had followed her through the tunnel to the bridge mewed his hunger call and she trilled impatiently at him to be silent.

Overhead, the ceiling had been opened to that great room she so loved to prowl, but now there was a vast, mottled ball nearby that Mira understood the large ones thought of as another room that they were anxious to enter. The nearness of the lighted ball drove away the creatures she often challenged when she and the dominant tom were alone in the emptiness.

There was no chance of a hunt here. The tom was involved in some big, clumsy way with the other large ones. The small queen had done something clever, but nothing that interested Mira. The tom-who-cut was exchanging thoughts with the great-queen-who-was-not-alive; the young tom was watching and learning; the mad tom was unreadable but the aura surrounding him made Mira’s fur rise.

The kitten mewed again, complaining. Mira cuffed him with retracted claws. She looked once more at the large white ball beyond the roof. The face of it, seen through the maze of lines and colors where the monkey things lived, was colored blue and green.

She looked away and forgot it, attention withdrawn. What the large ones were doing did not interest her. She imagined the taste of freshly killed fish. With a warning trill to her kitten she launched herself into the transit tube toward the compartment containing the terminals for the food synthesizer, which the great-queen-who-was-not-alive had taught her to operate.

“
Du lieber
, that damned cat. I can taste the fish,” Dietr Krieg complained.

“You are her godfather, Dietr,” Damon said. “You made her what she is.”

Duncan was pleased that young Ng had found enough confidence to jab at the neurocybersurgeon. “Pay attention, all,” he said.

The others fell silent.

Duncan said, “How long to orbit, Anya?” Ordinarily it was a question that would have been addressed to Glory’s computer, but Duncan knew his people. Anya needed to be busy.

“Six days, ten hours uptime, Duncan.”

“Are we time-conformed?”

“Within two decimal places,” Damon said.

“Sail trim?”

With blind eyes they could all see the newly configured sail plan. All jibs, spankers, tops’ls, and t’gallants tightly furled. Courses on the mains and foremasts braced around to catch the torrent of photons from white Luyten, Tachyons were forgotten now, their influence too subtle to affect the course Anya Amaya had set for Glory, bringing her into low planetary orbit around the luminous, glowing blue-green planet. And it was overhead now; they were within seven hundred thousand kilometers of the surface, carefully bleeding off the last of their interstellar speed.

In all, it was a magnificent job of sailing. Duncan told Anya so and felt the warmth of her response permeating the entire pre-planetary orbit injection gathering. Only Jean Marq made no response. Ordinarily he would be swarming over Anya’s calculations, making dozens of tiny changes. But nothing. Duncan probed and found that the Frenchman was daydreaming. Duncan felt the soft breath of warm wind, the smell of growing things. Provence? God, he hoped not that again. But Dietr had warned that Jean could break open. Still, as a member of
Glory’s
crew, he was here on the bridge. What alternative was there? To open an airlock and send him after his paracoita?

“Any messages from Voerster?” Duncan asked.

“Damon has taken that over,” Anya said.

“Well, boy?” Dietr Krieg asked.

“I have been getting voice from their observatory at Sternberg. Osbertus Kloster sends gigabits of anything and everything. He is eager to please, Duncan. I put most of it through the demographics program. We have the landing coordinates for the cargo shuttles, though, and something else. I may have misunderstood the meaning-- they still speak a kind of weird Afrikaans--but they asked several times if we had a physician aboard. A ’healer’ they said. I gather someone important is sick.”

“Downtimers expect immortality,” Dietr said scorn-fully.

Duncan said, “Keep guarding their frequency, Damon.”

“Yes, Duncan.”

“Jean,” Duncan probed gently. “Jean Marq? “

A long pause. Then: “Yes? What is it, Duncan?”

“Can you take the cargo pallets down? “

“Why, yes. If you want me to.”

Dietr asked, “Have they the proper facilities for keeping the embryos frozen?”

“They did when they ordered them, “ Duncan said.

“That was two hundred years ago, down there. “ Krieg had little faith in colonists. None at all in their ability to advance their technology. Krieg had examined all that Anya had put into the data bank--data derived from the man called Kloster--and he was not impressed. Societies that suffered major shocks tended to remain low-tech. If they recovered at all.

“The Voertrekker Minister of Husbandry said they are ready to receive the beasties,” Anya said.

“Maybe they think they are getting grown animals,” Krieg said.

“Even folk of Germanic stock could not be so badly informed, could they, Dietr? “ Damon asked wickedly.