“He has you there, Anya,” Duncan said. To Clavius, he said, “Have you had enough of life ashore?”
“I suspect it has had enough of me,” Black Clavius said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.
“We will talk of it,” Duncan said. He spoke to Eliana: “How many are outside?”
“Thirty. Perhaps as many as forty.”
“Are they soldiers?”
Eliana smiled tiredly. “They think they are.”
“They have weapons,” Anya said. “Therefore, for purposes of this discussion they are soldiers.”
“I fear that is true,” Osbertus Kloster said in a tremulous voice.
Tiegen Roark arrived, breathless, from two floors above. “They are settling down for the night in tents near the airship, mynheera. They have pickets out.”
Eliana said, “The Six Giants are all in the sky. Two will set by midnight. By two o’clock two more will be down and the night will be dark.” She looked straight at Duncan. “I am told that you are keeping yourself well by some power you have, but that it will not last. Is that true?”
“It is,” Duncan said.
“And that there is a skilled physician aboard the Goldenwing.”
“Yes.”
“Will that machine carry us all?”
“Seven. It can carry seven,” Anya said. “No more.” Somehow she did not want Eliana Ehrengraf aboard Glory.
“Seven and a child?”
“We can manage that,” Anya said grudgingly. She looked at Duncan. “But there is Han Soo.”
“A crewman who died during the voyage here,” Duncan said. “I owe him a grave. He had a dread of being cast into space. He was an old and honorable man.”
“Then we must provide what is needed,” Eliana said. She faced Duncan squarely, and suddenly it was as though they were alone in the shadowed room. “If my daughter does not receive the kind of treatment available on your vessel, she will die. Not tomorrow, but soon.”
Duncan looked into the wide, dark eyes of a fellow empath and smiled his melancholy smile. “Then we must provide what is needed,” he said, and took Eliana by the hand. For the first time in his life, Duncan Kr was in love.
26. TWO MEN OF THE WORLD
The Voertrekker-Praesident, sitting behind his polished slab of a table, regarded the Starman with interest. He dismissed Oberst Transkei with a silent wave of his hand. The Trekkerpolizei, concerned for the Praesident’s safety, withdrew frowning.
Ian Voerster said, “The warders tell me you are a Frenchman. I have never seen a Frenchman before. Are you unique?”
Jean Marq sat heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He had never before in his life been restrained from doing almost exactly as he chose to do. Being in custody was almost a pleasant experience for him. For the first time he was not burdened with decisions. He had been looking distractedly at the Zulu weapons on the wall above the Voertrekker-Praesident’s table. He knew what they were because he had seen similar ones in the Louvre or the Pompidou many years ago. There was a streak of venality in Jean Marq and he estimated that the relics must be worth a million new francs, possibly more. Yet they were removed from Earth, from France, from the Louvre and the Pompidou by light-years of space and time-dilated centuries. He shivered with a sense of his isolation from his roots.
“France has always been the most civilized nation on Planet Earth,” he said, almost defiantly. “In that sense all Frenchmen are unique. A man of the world would know that.” Duncan would be proud of him for challenging this offworld bourgeois authoritarian. The Thalassan, peasant that he was born, brought forth the qualities and bearing of an aristocrat when needed. It was one of the things that made him of such value to the Gloria Coelis syndicate.
The Voertrekker-Praesident steepled his fingers and scrutinized the hostage even more closely than before. It seemed remarkable to Ian Voerster that here before him sat a lordly representative of Earth, of the home-world of all Men. And yet, despite his airs and mysterious skills, he was quite as helpless as any kaffir. Would that I could dominate the animals of the Planetia so easily, Voerster thought.
But wait. Perhaps matters were not so simple as they appeared. This “Frenchman” had fallen quite easily into his hands. Perhaps too easily? Ian Voerster was a conspiratorial man. Was there something here that was hidden, and yet sent neural messages to his inner self? Black Clavius had always aroused this sort of suspicion in the Voertrekker-Praesident--a feeling that something was going inexorably awry out there beyond the range of a virtuous man’s understanding.
“You understand that you are a prisoner? And a hostage for the good behavior of your fellow syndics?” Ian Voerster kept his voice calm, even friendly.
“I do,” Jean Marq said. “I also know that you will have cause to regret what you have done. It may well be a thousand years before another Goldenwing chooses to visit the Luyten Sun. There is nothing here but brutes and truce-breakers.”
Ian’s reddish eyebrows arched so pronouncedly that they seemed almost to touch his high hairline. “I was not aware there was any truce between your people and mine, Mynheer Syndic,” he said.
“Or any war, either,” Jean Marq said calmly. “Colonials do not make Starmen into hostages. At least not until colonial science can produce something as necessary as a starship, Monsieur le President.”
“Is that a French form of address, Mynheer Marq? I am genuinely interested in the quaint customs of out-of-date civilizations.”
“Why have I been detained?” Jean Marq demanded, veering suddenly to near-explosive anger. He was developing a very great dislike for this pale man with his sparse fair hair, his thin lips, and small, alert eyes--like those of a pig rooting for truffles, he thought with a wild impulse to laugh aloud. Where had this rustic creature found the courage to challenge--and capture--a Wired Starman?
“Let me explain matters to you, Mynheer Marq,” Ian Voerster said. “You and your shipmates have arrived at a difficult time. There are changes taking place on Planet Voerster, and we are--quite frankly--not a people who take easily to changes. I will not bore you with the whole spectrum of Voersterian customs and political realities. Suffice it to say that I have found it necessary to make certain arrangements and alliances I regard as necessary for the survival of our social order. My wife has chosen to defy me. She has apparently enlisted the aid of a pair of your syndics, who have joined her at Einsamberg Kraal-- in the mountains some twenty-two hundred kilometers from here.”
“Your provincial politics mean nothing to Wired Ones,” Jean Marq said.
“That’s as may be, Mynheer Marq. But the fact is that your people have become involved. So it has become necessary for me to involve you.”
“There were messages to our ship asking for medical aid,” Jean said. “Our Master and Commander is a humanitarian.”
The small, bright eyes fixed on Jean Marq. “You are not a humanitarian, I take it.”
“I am a Starman, not a downworlder.”
“That’s plain enough. We won’t be troubled with sentiment, then,” Voerster said. “I approve of the demand for medical aid. I would have asked for it myself, if I had not been preempted. It is of absolute importance to the government of Voerster--”
“Meaning yourself, Monsieur le President” Jean Marq said with heavy irony.
“I do not deny it. I and my family represent the only law this world has ever known. We owe very little to the homeworld, Mynheer Starman. Our people were regarded as enemies and pariahs ever since the more militarily favored nations forced sanctions on us to change our chosen social order. The move from Sol to Luyten was the second Great Trek for the White Tribe. We do not change our ways easily.”
Jean Marq, Sorbonne intellectual and Gallic snob, regarded the Voertrekker-Praesident with distaste. Dietr Krieg was right in generally choosing not to come ashore on these bumpkin worlds.
“I was about to say that the medical assistance required is needed so that a political alliance can be fulfilled. I won�
�t trouble you further with details, except to say that your well-being depends on the delivery of the aid requested--and the return to my jurisdiction of certain citizens of Voerster who have broken a number of our laws. I shall make that clear to your syndics at Einsamberg.”
“I have heard that there is a beached Starman on Voerster,” Jean Marq said.
Ian Voerster’s smile showed tiny, even, white teeth. They looked like baleen in that large, florid face, Jean Marq thought.
“There is such a Starman. Black Clavius by name. He has been on Planet Voerster for many years. Our years, which are, I believe, somewhat longer than the Earth Standard years used aboard Goldenwings.”
Jean Marq was surprised. One didn’t expect colonials to be informed about the internals of life aboard lightsailers. He wondered if perhaps he had been guilty of making hasty judgments.
“Until a short time ago, Clavius was my personal guest here at Voertrekkerhoem,” Ian Voerster said. “Persons who spoke to the syndics of the Goldenwing Nepenthe all those years ago say there are stories on many worlds about Black Clavius.”
“There are some, I am sure,” Jean Marq said.
Ian Voerster smiled thinly. “He talks to God, you know.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela?”
“Quite literally, I assure you,” Ian Voerster said with a thread of scorn in his tone. Ian needed to turn on Marq the same spite the outworlder used on those he obviously thought of as inferior. This was a game Voertrekkers played in their cribs, and they played it well. “Of course, even Clavius is reluctant to claim that God replies to him directly. Or at all, for that matter. You are an odd lot, your Starmen. Do you suffer delusions or great loss of intellectual capacity when you are separated from your--” He made a disdainful gesture about his head. “Drogue, you call it?”
Jean Marq looked at the Voertrekker-Praesident with grudging respect. The man was even more cruel and more capable than Marq had first supposed. Duncan was going to have his hands full with this one.
“My mental capacity is adequate to my tasks, I assure you, Monsieur le President,” Marq said.
“Excellent,” Voerster said, getting to his feet in dismissal. “You will dine with me tonight. Mynheer Starman. I look forward to it. I am sure that two men of the world can find much on which to agree.”
27. A FUNERAL FAR FROM THE YANGTZE
A column of greasy smoke rose from the foot of the valley toward the overcast. Gusts of wind swirled down the palisade of the Shieldwall north of the manor house, scattered the smoke and then, dying, allowed it to re-form its oily path between soil and sky.
Duncan, heavily dressed against the intermittent rain, leaned on the parapet and studied the lower valley of Einsamtal thoughtfully.
“Is there much to the rites?” he asked.
Eliana, dressed much more lightly and quite at ease in the chilly air that was customary so near Voerster’s arctic circle, said, “Yes. A great deal. We are a people who value ritual. I am told that on the homeworld there are still ruined monuments on the land whence we came, monuments where my people used to gather to swear loyalty to one another and celebrate the pride of the White Tribe. It is no different here.”
“But funerals?”
“Death is our great reality.”
Duncan looked steadily at Eliana’s fine-featured face, the dark brows and eyes, the ebony hair blowing in the wind. He could feel her within him. He was a trained and experienced empath and yet he had never felt another’s gift so deeply. What, he wondered, could this remarkable woman have accomplished had she been found on Search and Wired at an early age?
“Death, your reality, Eliana? I don’t sense that, somehow.”
She essayed a slow smile, an expression of deep wistful-ness. “Perhaps I overstated it, Duncan. We are a melancholy people. There is a darkness in us. In twenty years or two hundred it will all come to nothing here. We abandoned justice a thousand years ago. That is why nothing changes on Voerster and why we make so grand a business of dying.”
She indicated the pyre beyond the rocky ridge at the foot of the valley. “The Planetians are a race of brutes, but they would never deny Eigen Fontein his funeral fire.”
“Interesting,” murmured Duncan, returning to his view of the rising smoke column. It occurred to him that men had begun to rise above the animals when first they invented ceremonies with which to face death.
“And they honor a white flag,” he said.
“More or less,” Eliana said. “I would not put too fine a point on that. The Highlanders have their own ways.”
“They sent you the Luftkapitan.”
“They had two reasons for that. They wanted me to see how they had mistreated him. And they had a message meant for me, personally.”
“The Law of Tribe,” Duncan murmured.
“You have been studying, Starman.”
“You have an impressive library here. And this--” He touched the socket in his skull, “--this helps one with languages.”
“So Black Clavius told me,” Eliana Voerster said. “How eager he must be to connect again. He once said it was like setting the mind free to roam the stars.”
“Colorful. And almost true,” Duncan said. And how you would love it, Eliana--
Her eyes met his directly, answering him.
“My concern is my daughter,” she said. “If you know the Law of Tribe, you know what was promised the Highlanders. Both of the Fontein’s solutions are unsatisfactory. But I will submit if that is the only way to spare Broni.”
Duncan felt a shudder of revulsion at the thought of Eliana Ehrengraf in the hands of one of the strange men at the foot of the valley.
“Don’t judge my people too harshly,” she said. “Our laws are what our world has made them. Our ways seem harsh to you, but they were written to help us survive.”
“I don’t judge, Eliana,” Duncan said. “Does your husband know what the man down there intends?”
“If he does not, I will tell him. As soon as Buele and your woman repair the radio. It might divert him from Broni. It may even give him reason to reconsider what he has done.”
Amaya would hit flash point if she heard herself referred to as “your woman,” Duncan thought. No New Earth feminist ever thought of herself as any man’s woman. He wondered what Eliana’s reaction might be to the uninhibited way the syndics lived in deep space.
He said, “In the cargo bay of my shuttle lies the body of an old friend to whom I promised a burial. Would the Fonteins permit it--under a flag of truce?”
Eliana considered the outrage Georg Fontein was feeling. The brother lost was hardly beloved. That was not the highland way. Fontein blood had been spilled, and that was a serious matter. “I don’t know, Duncan. They might, but I am not sure.”
Duncan unconsciously shifted his position to ease the strain on his wounded leg. He felt feverish and the thigh muscle was swollen and throbbing. Whatever was to be done had to be done soon.
Eliana said instantly, “You are in pain.”
It would have been useless to deny it to an empath. “Yes.”
Her dark eyes were wide and steady. “So is my Broni.”
“I know.”
“Can you bury your dead and still take Broni with you to your vessel?”
Duncan drew a deep breath and decided. “Broni and all of us, Eliana, if there are more of those--” He indicated the foot of the valley once more--”on the way from the highlands.”
Eliana had shared part of Ian’s threat with the Starman. That Ian himself would also be on the way as soon as the weather cleared, she did not mention to Duncan Kr. It was the nearest one empath could come to lying to another.
Duncan said, “Clavius tells me that he thinks Dietr Krieg can help Broni.”
“I told you that when I first saw you,” Eliana said.
“That was faith speaking. But Clavius knows what a syndic physician can do.” His cool gray eyes fixed on Eliana’s dark ones. “We are not miracle workers
, mynheera. You must understand this.”
“I know what you are, Duncan Kr,” Eliana Ehrengraf said.
Duncan made no immediate reply. Of course she knew what he was and who. Her raw talent informed her. She knew, but did not know why she knew. Perhaps this made for more trust than he, Duncan, deserved. He was only a ship’s captain, after all. Not a saint. “And if Dietr can help Broni, what then?”
“One trial at a time, Duncan. Save her life first.”
Duncan looked again down the sloping valley of Einsamtal. The wind carried the sounds of the Highlanders’ funeral chants. And mingled with the mournful piping came the sound of a balichord. Black Clavius stood on one of the corner towers playing for the enemy dead.
“If we leave here, what will become of your kaffirs?”
“They will melt into the mountains. They are all hill people.”
“How do you bury your dead, Eliana?”
“We weave a sarcophagus of grass. On Earth we used coffins of wood, but here there is almost none. So we use what we have in abundance. Grass.”
“Ask your people to make such a sarcophagus.”
“Very well.”
“And I will carry a message to the Planetians.”
“You? But you are hurt, Duncan--”
“They are less likely to do something treacherous if I ask for a truce to bury my syndic. I come from the sky, remember.”
“It may seem that you are dealing with primitives, Duncan. But you are not. Perhaps you need to remember that. The Planetians are sophisticated enough to be treacherous.”
Duncan took her hand. The flesh was warm, her grip strong. “Do you know what a Cargo Cult is, Eliana?”
“Is that what you think Voerster has become?”
“Hasn’t it? Don’t you wait for years--tens or hundreds of years--for the Goldenwings to bring what you want from out there?”
She closed her eyes and said with deep wistfulness, “My poor Voerster.”
She was a Voertrekker aristocrat, and for all her unhappiness with life as she was forced by duty to live it, she loved her homeworld deeply. Duncan still felt echoes of a similar feeling from long ago. He remembered the gray sea and the dark sky of Thalassa. Human beings, he thought, were capable of strange and powerful attachments.
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