Glory

by Alfred Coppel

  The conversation proceeded for several minutes and then stopped. Damon demanded, “Can you understand that?”

  “Not at all,” the neurocybersurgeon said. “Afrikaans-- particularly this Afrikaans--isn’t German. I will have to run it through Glory’s translation program.”

  Damon protested, “We must do something about Duncan and Anya.”

  “Not about Jean Marq?”

  “That is not what I meant,” Damon said violently.

  Dietr said, “Anya will have to get Duncan back to the ship. There is no other option. I think those people below will refuse to cooperate unless I agree to treat one of them. ‘The daughter of the house’ is the way they put it. Anya says she probably needs a heart valve. I told the Sailing Master all she had to do was get them up here. Then we can worry about what has happened to Jean Marq.”

  “Can she do it?”

  “Why, youngster, she must, mustn’t she?”

  In the manor house the kaffirs who had arrived on the Volkenreiter and the house people set up defenses which dated to the time of the Rebellion. Iron shutters for the larger windows and doors, barricades in the outer grounds, traps in the avenues leading to the house. They might be outnumbered by the Planetians, but no one had ever taken Einsamberg’s manor house by storm. For the moment, the situation was a stalemate.

  Black Clavius had estimated that the attackers numbered about thirty Highlanders. Eliana had recognized the sons of Vikter Fontein at a distance and had seen one of them fall.

  The manor house had radio communication--of a sort-- with the world beyond the Grimsel Mountains. Reception was very poor, had always been because of the surrounding terrain. But Ian Voerster had managed to get through, and he had delivered a fulsome tirade of threats and demands. When Eliana had refused to be intimidated, his anger had grown progressively more abusive and violent. Ian Voerster was not a man accustomed to being challenged as Eliana was challenging him now. Yes, Broni was with her, and no, Broni would not be returned to her father’s jurisdiction. She had answered Ian Voerster calmly, even icily, with a contemptuous civility that infuriated him.

  Each exchange had made Eliana more determined, and Ian Voerster more furious. Finally, he had said in a voice trembling with rage: “I am sending a detachment of the Wache by airship to return Broni to Voertrekkerhoem and take possession of Einsamberg Kraal. Do not interfere with them.”

  To which Eliana replied, “Broni you shall not have. As for Einsamberg, you have no more rights here than that commando of mutants at the foot of the valley. Einsamberg and its lands are covered by a First Lander’s writ. You know this as well as I do. You can send force, Ian, but force does not make you right.”

  The Voertrekker-Praesident’s face was livid. “Damn you for an arrogant bitch. I am the law on Voerster, remember it.”

  “We have killed Eigen Fontein,” Eliana said calmly. “He tried to attack the Starman. If you come here, guard yourself.”

  “You lured the Starman to you,” he accused.

  “And one of your highland freaks has wounded him. Ian, you are playing with forces you don’t understand.”

  “And you do, shiftless bitch?”

  The use of the word “shiftless” had special meaning on Voerster, where by long tradition women of the mynheeren class wore long and concealing quilted gowns with nothing under them. This custom had the force of law, and had ever since the days of the first post-Rebellion Voertrekker-Praesident, who had written in his Colonial Instructions that upper-class women should dress in that manner in order “to be both modest and aware of their nakedness.” Meaning their vulnerability.

  Eliana refused to give him satisfaction. “Shiftless I may be. But I have the right to defy you in this, and you know it.”

  “Tell the people from the ship that their colleague has delivered their cargo. He is my honored guest at Voertrekkerhoem.”

  Eliana felt a chill. She had not supposed Ian was so set on having his way that he would risk alienating the Starfolk whom Planet Voerster might need to depend on in the future.

  “No matter what you do, Ian, you will not get Broni. This I promise you.”

  “We shall see,” Voerster said, and broke the crackling connection.

  As the kraalheera of Einsamberg Kraal, the decision to defend or surrender was Eliana’s alone. Even Osbertus, who was given to talking matters to death, and Tiegen Roark, who tended to yearn for risk-free solutions, made no offers of advice. For this Eliana Ehrengraf was grateful.

  They had put the injured Starman into one of the grand guest chambers, a cavern of stone walls jammed with ancient, ornate, and incalculably valuable carved wooden furniture.

  Eliana stood in the doorway, watching the woman called Anya Amaya and Tiegen Roark care for the Starcaptain. By some mysterious black magic of the mind, Duncan Kr had blocked out the damage done his leg by the shotgun. It was a remarkable performance. The Starman, lean and more darkly appealing than any Voertrekker, had impressive powers. Still, it appeared that Duncan Kr was in considerable pain. Tiegen, his skills as a Healer belittled by the strange talents of the people from space, had almost retired to the role of spectator. That was a pity, Eliana thought. Tiegen, the Tiegen she had known all her life, was capable of more than that.

  She walked on through the high-ceilinged hallway lined with portraits of Ehrengraf forebears. Many wore the uniform of the planetary militia that had been formed--and had ruled on Voerster--during the Rebellion. The bitter time of Reconstruction came later. It was during this period that her ancestor, who had sided with the rebellious kaffirs, had been disenfranchised, then arrested and finally “rusticated.” On this very estate, the property of a more conventional cousin, a member of a less rebellious cadet branch of the Ehrengrafs.

  From the upper stories, where her kaffirs manned the windows and arrow-slits, she heard an occasional probing shot. What we have here is a war, she thought. Small, but still a war. And a stalemate that could not last. If Ian ordered in the Wache by airship, the unsettled weather on the Grassersee was a protection. But if he called for help from Fontein, time would grow short very quickly.

  Starman Duncan and the woman had come down from orbit without a single weapon. Such a peaceful intent was commendable, Eliana thought, but not helpful in the present circumstances.

  She passed a chain-and-counterweight wall clock at the end of the domed hallway. It had been built for Einsamberg centuries ago, as a curiosity. Quartz crystal clocks and the means of making them had been rediscovered, but the antique still worked. It kept track of the hours and the position of the Six Giants. It was cumbersome and anachronistic, and it was a perfect metaphor for Voertrekker society, which had begun to ossify the moment it was planted on this alien soil.

  Out of the shadows came one of her house people, a rifle on his back. Eliana wondered: Have I made a mistake in arming my kaffirs? It was a thought worthy of Ian Voerster and she knew it.

  “Mynheera. The Fonteins are sending the Luftkapitan under a white flag.”

  A truce flag, Eliana thought. What nicety. Just as though Georg Fontein were a conquering general instead of a highland bandit.

  The kaffir regarded her with level, pale, unreadable eyes. Peculiarly, the whispers about Otto Klemmer’s ancestry had put the kaffirs off.

  “Let us see what Field Marshal Fontein wants to tell me,” she said.

  25. THE KRAALHEERA OF EINSAMBERG

  Eliana Ehrengraf met Luftkapitan Klemmer in the outer courtyard of the manor house. She was prepared to see that he had been mistreated. Nothing less was to be expected from Planetians. But she had to steel herself at the sight of Klemmer’s battered face and ballooning lower lip. She had heard of the method used by the Highlanders to ensure docility among their prisoners. She had never seen it.

  Otto Klemmer, a formal man, refused to be assisted until he had surrendered his white pennant and delivered himself of his message which was sticking like slime in his throat.

  “Mynheera,” he said, speak
ing with great difficulty. “I have been commanded to offer you The Fontein’s terms for surrender.”

  “Come inside first, Luftkapitan, and let the Healer tend your wounds.”

  Klemmer regarded the slender, erect figure of the Ehrengraf through tearing, watering eyes. She was like a sword-blade, he thought. Tempered and beautiful and, in certain circumstances, deadly. It would not be out of character for a Voertrekker aristocrat to have a messenger killed if the message was demeaning. A fact that had not escaped Georg Fontein, Klemmer thought. May his feet and hands be broken, his progeny prove sterile and his sexual organs rot. An ancient kaffir curse. One worthy of the new heir of Winter Kraal.

  “I am dishonored enough, mynheera,” the airship captain mumbled. “Let me be rid of the load of bile Fontein sends to Einsamberg.”

  Healer Tiegen Roark appeared behind Eliana with Black Clavius at his side. The kaffir scowled at Klemmer’s state and said, in his sonorous voice: “’Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him...’“

  Tiegen said furiously, “Stop that babble, old man, and help me with him.”

  But Eliana made a commanding gesture. She knew what it meant to the battered airshipman to stand on his feet and deliver his message. “Be silent, Tiegen,” she said.

  Clavius, who loathed anyone who deliberately inflicted pain on another, completed his quotation from his beloved Book: “’And repayeth them that hate Him, to destroy them: He will not be slack to him that hateth Him, He will repay him to his face.’“

  Klemmer held himself stiffly upright and spoke The Fontein’s words. The claim to house and chattels was insolent, but understandable in the circumstances. But when the airshipman reached the demand for both Broni and the Ehrengraf, the words came near to choking him.

  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.”