Both Clavius and Osbertus wore white-cloth dusters to save their clothing and protective goggles over their eyes against the flying grasses and the lash of the Nachtebrise.
“Mynheer, this is breathtaking,” Clavius said. “How fast are we going?”
Osbertus glanced at the relative wind gauge fixed to the double-monocle windshield and said proudly, “We are making fifty-four kilometers an hour. Do you know that style of measurement, Clavius?”
The black man smiled broadly into the wind. “For some years now, Mynheer Osbertus, I have moved only on my two feet, and somewhat more slowly. But yes, I do remember something about kilometers and hours.”
The astronomer squinted into the wind and chided himself for asking so foolish a question of a man who had journeyed among the stars. But Black Clavius, with that strange sensitivity he so often displayed, said, “This mode of travel is most exciting, Mynheer.”
Osbertus risked a quick glance to see if the big man was ridiculing him. But Clavius was plainly enjoying the charge of the steamer through the Sea of Grass, with all of its noise and bumps and attendant discomforts.
Clavius said, “Between the stars, there is great beauty, but no excitement. One floats in eternity, seldom near enough to anything to experience speed. Here the sensation of motion is irresistible. Can we go faster?”
“Faster than this?” Osbertus was a trifle breathless from the steamer’s rush through the Grassersee. The mech who had assembled the steamer, from parts ordered by dirigible from Pretoria, was a brash journeyman. He had boasted to the Astronomer-Select that the steamer’s speed was limited only by the terrain under the wheels and the courage of the tillerman. But he soberly suggested that given the Mynheer’s age and eyesight, speeds in excess of sixty kilometers per hour were unwise.
Eliana, after riding with Osbertus (How she had smiled and laughed with delight!), had admonished him. “I enjoyed it tremendously, Cousin,” she said. “But you must drive carefully. Who shall be my friend if you crack your skull?”
Osbertus took a deep breath and made the ultimate gesture of trust. “Would you like to drive, Clavius?”
For an unlicensed kaffir to drive any powered vehicle on Voerster was discouraged. Once it had been a punishable offense. Now it was only custom.
“I thank you for the offer, Mynheer. But I had best remain in the hands of one who knows how to handle this powerful machine.”
Osbertus Kloster sat up a trifle straighter and flexed his cramped knees. There was very little room between the thin steel floorboards and the tiller. But despite his discomfort, he was compelled to reply to the Starman’s graciousness in kind. He advanced the throttle, valving steam until the steamer’s speed reached a full seventy kilometers per hour. Behind, the rooster-tail of grass and immature spore pods rose even higher.
“Marvelous, Mynheer Osbertus, marvelous,” Black Clavius said over the sounds of passage. His great hands encircled the neck of the balichord, and as the steamer’s speed increased he looked skyward at the star-river of the Milky Way. “’Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them.’“
“You astonish me, Clavius,” Osbertus said. “That was from the Book of Genesis, wasn’t it? We have so few eidetics on Voerster. Do you remember everything?”
“Yes, Mynheer.”
“Remarkable.”
“It is not always a blessing, Mynheer.”
“Yes. I can understand how that might be. One seldom imagines a Starman suffering the ordinary problems of life.”
“We do, Mynheer.” His teeth showed white again in that dazzling smile. “And some not so ordinary.” He paused; he seemed suddenly to be listening to something only he could hear above the clangor of the racing steamer. “Mynheer. Stop.”
“The Mynheera Eliana summoned us posthaste to Broni, Clavius.”
“Nevertheless. Please stop now.”
Perplexed, Osbertus Kloster reduced the throttle and hauled on the brake lever. It took the steamer almost a full kilometer to come to a halt. It stood wheezing and emitting vapor on the dark grassland.
Quite suddenly an ebray, a gravid female, lurched to her feet and stood spraddle-legged, regarding the lamps of the steamer with huge, gleaming black eyes. The animal was a meter high at the withers and stood on legs as delicate as grass-stems. In full, leaping flight--what the Voertrekkers called “pranking”--the ebray was capable of outrunning the steamer. But this one was about to give birth. She had the ravaged look of a beast being consumed from within, as indeed she was. A necrogene, she could expect her voracious offspring to gnaw and rip its way into the world through the soft velvety hide of her belly. The ebray would then die and the young ebray would stay with the maternal corpse until the edible flesh was consumed before trotting away from the remains of the creature who had, in effect, transferred her future to him.
“Go around her” Clavius whispered. “She is close to her time.”
Osbertus, not an unkind man, was strangely moved by the Wired Man’s obvious concern for the doomed ebray. He advanced the throttle slowly and drove a wide circle around the expectant necrogene, who turned to keep facing the steamer, tottering weakly on legs that would no longer firmly sustain her.
When Osbertus had consulted his compass and resumed his course through the grass for Voertrekkerhoem at a somewhat slower pace, he asked. “How did you know?”
Clavius said only, “I knew, Mynheer. I knew.”
Osbertus turned to look at his passenger. Clavius’ goggles were pushed high on his forehead, and the Voertrekker was astonished and touched to see tears running down the Starman’s black cheeks.
As the steamer moved majestically out of the savannah and onto the curving, cobblestoned esplanade leading to the Great Gate at Voertrekkerhoem, Osbertus Kloster pondered the Starman’s behavior out on the Grassersee.
The Astronomer-Select was a compassionate man. For all that he was a mynheer and had lived all his life in circumstances that made liberalism and consideration for his inferiors relatively easy, Osbertus could not be faulted for the genuineness of his feelings. He did his best to uplift the benighted kaffirs, he contributed regularly to the collections of alms for the indigent lumpen in the cities of Voersterstaad and Pretoria, to the simple preachers of the Cult of Elmi, and to the Society for the Respect for Native Life. In a nation of hunters, Osbertus Kloster had fired a gun only a dozen times in his life, and had always (to his stern father’s disgust) managed to miss his targets. He regarded his fortunate birth as a burden requiring him to display kindness and consideration to all the creatures of Voerster, human and otherwise.
But the Starman’s reaction to the encounter with the gravid ebray fascinated and disturbed him. Not because he regarded Clavius’ tears for the poor creature weak or demeaning, but because had he been alone on the Sea of Grass at the time of the encounter, he, the softhearted Osbertus Kloster, would have driven past the ebray, or even over her, without a second thought.
This, he understood, was because he had been born and raised on a planet where all native life was necrogenic. It was very sad, but he (and, indeed, nine hundred Voertrekkers out of a thousand) would have been quite unmoved by the fragile creature about to give terrible birth alone on the Sea of Grass.
Before driving through the sally port to the Trekkerpolizei station just inside the walls of the Voertrekker-Praesident’s residence, he slowed to a crawl along the cobblestoned way and said to Black Clavius: “Is Voerster very different from the other worlds you have seen?”
“Different,” Clavius said. “And much the same.”
“I don’t understand you, Clavius.”
“The worlds of near space are human worlds. To the limit of our reach, Mynheer, it seems our species found worlds waiting. Some fallow, some possessed of native life, but only of a low order. It is as the Psalmist wrote, these many millennia ago: “’Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou has put all things under his feet.’“
; “Yet you wept for the ebray.”
Clavius regarded the Voertrekker steadily. “The beautiful creature was dying, Mynheer Osbertus.”
“Yes, of course. But ebray are necrogenes, it is the way of things on Voerster.” Never in a long life had he ever considered a challenge to the way things were on Voerster. It would be as sensible as regretting the color of the sky or the way the Six Giants moved about the heavens. How could the natural order of things be challenged, even by human grief?
“Of course, Mynheer. I should not criticize merely because I feel deeply.” Black Clavius smiled sadly at the Astronomer-Select. “You see, I am an empath. To a degree, all Wired Ones are. It derives from our enhancement.’“ He touched the socket hidden in his hair. “But perhaps you can understand better if I tell you that as we watched the little ebray, I felt some of her pain, her perplexity, her sadness.”
Osbertus slowly advanced the throttle and let the steamer roll forward toward the police post. “Why do I think, Clavius, that you find Voerster a melancholy world?”
The Starman did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the towering, ugly structure ahead. There were armed sentries on the roof walks. Lord, Clavius silently addressed his Friend and Creator, I cannot understand why you made us as we are. For that matter, why did you populate this world with necrogenes? Perhaps just to hold it until we humans arrived? If so, I thank you, but wasn’t it a bit extreme? The ebray was beautiful. Must beauty live briefly and perish young? Then why is the glorious whirlpool of M-31 in Andromeda so breathtaking, and so nearly eternal? You perplex me, Lord, indeed you do.
The Trekkerpolizeikapitan was acquainted with the Astronomer-Select and his crazy land-yacht. Everyone in the west of the Grassersee was. Even the lumpen took a perverse pride in Osbertus and his ideosyncrasies. Heat radiating from the boiler on the steamer smelled of coal gas and hot metal. The policeman, a young man, could scarcely restrain his curiosity about the vehicle. There were only a dozen such machines on Planet Voerster, and one was in the Voersterstaad Museum of Contemporary Science and Industry. They were stunningly expensive and available only to members of the mynheeren class. The officer forced his attention from the steamer to its passengers.
To Clavius he said, “Your passbook, kaffir.” He knew that the black man had been summoned by the mynheera Eliana Ehrengraf and so must be admitted to Voertrekkerhoem, passbook or no, but the strictures of Voertrekker society had been established very long ago, far away, and reinforced by the memory of the Rebellion. Kaffirs were always challenged entering the home of the Voertrekker-Praesident of Voerster.
Clavius, understanding exactly the thoughts that were in the young policeman’s mind, produced a tattered passbook issued to him many years ago, when The Voerster had been young in his office.
The policeman inspected and returned it. He stepped back and saluted the Astronomer-Select to indicate that the road to the Grand Portico--the narrow stone porch facing the front of the great house--was clear.
He watched the steamer proceed around the long curve of the drive--an avenue lined with a few of the Earth trees that had managed to take root in the alien soil, and a great many native plants, pulpy, flowerless, and ugly. They grew to thirty meters and more in the protected environment of Voertrekkerhoem’s garden.
The Nachtebrise was still blowing toward the slowly lightening horizon. Clavius dismounted from the steamer and stood while Osbertus moved it into the paddock where the mounts of visitors were confined. None of the beasts were to be seen in the paddock and Osbertus was glad of it. The mock horses of Voerster, toothed necrogenes distantly related to the ebray, had an insatiable taste for the gum used for the steamer’s water hoses.
Clavius stood looking up at the lighted tower window at the end of the long hall off which would be found the Voertrekkersdatter’s room. He had never been inside Voertrekkerhoem, but he had encountered Broni and her mother on the mynheera Eliana’s excursions into the townships with help for the kaffirs who labored on the Voerster and Ehrengraf lands. Broni had been enchanted with Clavius’ balichord and with the ancient songs of Earth he knew.
To the Starman she had described in minute detail the establishment in which she lived, down to the colors of the stained glass in the prayer bays and the weave of the tapestries on the walls. Clavius had suspected then, when Broni was still prepubescent, that the girl was a potential eidetic and almost certainly a developing empath.
He had never mentioned it, not even to the mynheera Eliana. It had seemed best, considering the precarious state of the girl’s health.
But Voertrekkerhoem was precisely as Broni Ehrengraf Voerster had described it. As a lark she had even given Clavius the exact number of slate slabs in the broad stairs leading to the Portico. He did not count them because he knew that Broni’s tally was correct. It was characteristic of eidetics not to make mistakes with numbers or with any physical facts. Clavius wondered if Broni had ever sat at an open window here at Voertrekkerhoem, counting the number of stars she could see at one given hour of the night. He had done that himself, many, many years ago, by a slow river in a place called South Carolina on Old Earth.
“Clavius?”
“Mynheer.”
“Do you find it impressive?”
“I find it--unique, Mynheer.”
“I am far not sure what you mean by that, Clavius,” Osbertus Kloster said dubiously. “But follow me. I will take you to the Voertrekkerschatz Eliana.”
9. A TRANSIT OF DRACHE
The brilliance reflecting from the nitrogen ice clouds of Drache was so dazzling it was painful to look upon the white giant with unprotected eyes. The light struck the skylar surfaces of Glory’s sails and was flung like a million arrows in all directions so that the great Goldenwing appeared to be flying through a sparkling shower of liquid diamonds.
By now Glory was moving at a significant percentage of the speed of light. The process of bleeding off interstellar velocity continued. The time dilation between Glory and her destination had dropped to a small fraction. The blue shift of stars ahead was all but gone. The red behind Glory had faded to a dusty rose.
Under Anya Amaya’s guidance the deck crew of four had assembled in the bridge to begin the long, slow process of furling the speed sails: stuns’ls, t’gallants, flying jibs, and spankers. In Glory’s sail plan these numbered over one thousand and each had to be furled with great care in order to prevent damage to the whisper-thin skylar.
The observation dome of the bridge was uncovered, making it possible to observe almost the entire, vast spread of skylar. Among the sails, swarming along the monofilament stays and braces, monkeys raced from hull to tops and back again as each bit of skylar was carefully gasketted to its yard.
This was Damon Ng’s first participation in this complex evolution. He was terrified that he would commit a gross error, but elated that so far he had not. Only Marq was in a pod. Anya, Damon, and Duncan were Wired, but floating free in the bridge.
Damon did not completely understand why the Master and the Sailing Master wished to sail the ship “hands on” at these times, but they did. And it seemed to Damon that Glory responded to their personal touch. “She becomes sweeter, easier to sail” Duncan explained. His quiet smile made Damon wonder if he was being hazed in Duncan’s low-key way. He doubted it. Glory did seem most particularly yare at these times.
He loved that Old Earth word borrowed from the sailors who sailed wooden ships on a blue-and-white ocean. When first Damon essayed to use the expression, Anya had said with serious mien: “It is pronounced yar, Damon. Yar. Remember. The others will laugh at you if you say yair.”
The young man from Grissom finished the remote furling of the starboard mainyard stuns’l with a genuine flourish. Glory reported the task complete through his drogue and Damon allowed himself to enjoy the moment.
“So take a bow, sailor. You have accomplished the simple”
That was Jean, who was never pleased or satisfied with anything Damon did. He glanced over at Ma
rq’s pod. The Frenchman lay deep in the glyceroid, to all appearances in a deep operational coma. Damon knew better. Jean Marq never surrendered completely to Glory.
He felt a firm grip on his shoulder. It was Duncan floating in midair above the manual control panels for the starboard side of the rig: the starboard main, mizzen, and foremasts.
“That was well done, Damon,” Duncan said aloud. His drogue cable curled about him. Today he was wearing the bottom half of a skinsuit because he had earlier been EVA.
“Don’t let Jean trouble you. He knows good work when he sees it.”
Anya floated high, near the crystal dome of the bridge. She was naked, as she customarily was when working the ship from inboard. Damon was young enough to find her nudity and availability fascinating. Anya was far more provocative than any of the girls he had known on Grissom.
She was silhouetted against the brilliant light of Drache. The photons were penetrating her slim arms and legs. Damon could see the shadows of the slender bones within.
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