Glory (44 page)

He had done these things, the old Kraalheer thought, because the world was in great need of a radical change of direction.

With each decade that passed after Landers’ Day, Voerster had sunk deeper into iniquity. Ulf was only a mildly religious man, and he was by no means a progressive (the thought made him shudder), but the fact was that Ian Voerster’s rule was iniquitous.

The Kraalheeren who officered the
lumpen
ranked between Ulf and the outskirts of Voersterstaad chose to defy Ian Voerster only because he challenged their old privileges. But no matter why they fought, the Kraalheer of Windhoek considered, the important thing was that they would rise against the government. Such a thing had never before happened among the whites of Planet Voerster.

But oh, Lord, Ulf thought. I wish I were younger and a better soldier.

Across the wet field which was turning into a soupy sea of mud, Ulf could see Ian Voerster. His staff seemed badly undermanned. Were the rumors true, then? Were his loyalists holding back and waiting to see if a force gathered behind the figurehead of the Voertrekkerschatz Eliana Ehrengraf?

Ulf looked up at a sky filled with flying, mating grasses. Blades had broken free of the wet soil and were rising all over the Grassersee. From Sternberg to Milagro, the grass was flying in a millennial dance that was ancient before the first necrogenes had developed on Voerster. In spite of himself, Ulf Walvis was moved, and he knew that every person on the field shared his response to the most indigenous of Planet Voerster’s botanical mysteries.

Ulf raised his field glasses. If he was a general he would act the part, though he knew nothing about organized fighting. The Voerster knows very little more, he thought, and instead of being a comforting thought, it chilled him to the bone.

He tried to pierce the curtain of rain and grasses. The air glittered and coruscated with green fire as the shiny leaves spun swiftly in the wind. He lowered the binoculars and wiped the lenses. Was she coming? Had her ambiguous answer been a yes or a no? Would the Starmen aid her? He thought not. He had read the credo of the Wired Ones. It was said they honored a Universal Directive not to interfere in the politics of less technologically advanced societies. Ulf s studies suggested that the Starmen had few weapons. But “few” could be catastrophic. Ulf Walvis had not seen the thing they called a beamer used on the day Starman Marq delivered the animal embryos. But he had heard stories. Apparently it had terrified the Wache. With such energy weapons, the men from space could decimate Voerster. But the Starmen did not sail the deep of space in warships. Perhaps that was a blessing. There were weapons too horrible to be used. The homeworld had been ravaged by them. Not once but three times.

High in the air over Voersterstaad there was a sound like that of ripping cloth, followed by a rolling sonic boom.
Eliana
, old Ulf thought, hitching up his weapons. The Starmen were returning Eliana Ehrengraf to the planet of her birth.

With its ceramic skin still glowing with the heat of atmospheric friction,
Glory
’s small landing sled furrowed the wet black soil between the forces drawn up outside Voersterstaad. Steam roiled into the air, emerald leaves, flushed with mating hormones, swirled and flew from the atmospheric bow wave ahead of the sled.

The machine came to rest facing Ian Voerster’s hastily assembled commandos. The ranks wavered, but did not break and run. Ulf Walvis’ troops ran forward exultantly.

The
lumpen
accepted immediately what the Kraalheeren only hoped was true. The New Elmi was aboard the spacecraft. The lady of Ehrengraf was once again on the soil of her homeworld, delivered in Voerster’s time of travail by the almost mythical Wired Ones. A thousand armed men formed a half circle around the hissing, steaming ceramic spear point from space and began to chant.

“El-mi...El-mi...El-mi!”

Ulf Walvis felt himself being pushed forward. Suddenly his colleagues in rebellion had appeared on the field, ready to greet the New Elmi.

The ramp dropped on the sled and Eliana Ehrengraf stepped onto the wet ground. She was dressed as no Voertrekker had ever seen a Voertrekkerschatz dressed, in a skinsuit and environmental unit. Behind her towered the large form of the black Starman, Clavius. At her right stood her cousin, the Astronomer-Select of Voerster, and at the head of the ramp leading from the spacecraft stood the Starman female Anya Amaya.

The insurgents waited, but there was no Broni, no boy Buele.

A stillness fell across the field. The only sound was the hissing of the rain and the soft whispering song of the grasses.

When she spoke, Eliana’s voice was amplified by the helmet that covered her dark fall of hair. “I did not wish to return. But you asked me and I am here.”

Ulf Walvis stumbled forward, suddenly feeling foolish in his warrior’s garb. “Voertrekkerschatz, kraalheera, the Committee desires--”

“Mynheer Ulf,” Eliana said firmly. “I have accepted the Committee’s invitation to govern, not to pretend. I have not come home to create a new myth. I intend to be the New Elmi in fact, not legend.” She indicated the Starman who stood looming over her, silent and somber, with an ancient balichord slung over a massive shoulder. “This man will speak for me to the kaffirs. If that is not satisfactory, clear away your men for I intend to return to the
Glory
.”

“Kraalheera--!”
The old Boer had never heard well-born woman speak so. He was shocked to the core.

Eliana said, “Call my husband. I want to speak with him.”

Ulf Walvis felt a weight being lifted from his shoulders. He called an adjutant and issued his orders. The people waited in silence as a delegation departed for the loyalist lines.

Eliana stood, as still as a statue. She could see the group across the field, Ian at its center.
I spent my life with him, bore him a child. But I feel nothing.

A messenger arrived from the rear and whispered in Walvis’ ear.

The old man said, “Kraalheera, across the Grassersee the kraals are declaring for you and against Ian.”

Eliana regarded him without expression.

The discussion among the loyalists ended. Eliana could see Ian Voerster looking across the lines at her.
What does he feel
, she wondered.
I am taking from him the only thing he values. Will he live and die hating me?
Ian began to march in her direction, flanked by Trekkerpolizeioberst Transkei and a young Wache officer. He looked weary. There were deep shadows under his eyes and etched lines in his face.
Things have not gone well for Ian
, Eliana thought.
Nor for me
.

She could feel, among all who watched her, the particular attention of Anya Amaya, standing in the open hatch of her space machine.
What would it have been like to wear the drogue?
To share an intimacy she could even now only imagine?
To see and feel and know all that Buele and beloved Broni would soon see and feel and know. Ah, Duncan
, she thought,
Duncan my love...

Ian Voerster, wet to the skin and bitterly angry, stomped through the mud and stood before her, arms akimbo.

“So you’ve come back, have you?”

When Eliana Ehrengraf spoke it was in a voice that rang with authority. “No, Cousin, I have
not
come back. This is all new. Now hear my terms.”

And behind her she heard the familiar deep and resonant whisper of Black Clavius speaking the words of the Preacher:

“’So I returned, and considered all of the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter--’“

And what had Duncan once said of Voerster? “Your world is an attempt to turn back a universal clock. It can’t survive.”
Would he have been so frank if he had known I would stand here now? But I am who and what I am.

Welcome home, Elmi
, Eliana thought sadly,
welcome home
.

As the Luyten sun rises swiftly above the curve of Voerster, the Goldenwing
Glory
prepares to depart from orbit around the silver planet. For the last twenty hours the Starmen aboard have watched the grasses of Voerster change the color of the single continent. Now the emerald green is fading as the grasses finish their aerial mating dance and die, falling from the sky in a desiccated rain of spores which can wait a season or a century to germinate. In their way, the grasses of Voerster are like the necrogenes, conforming to a millennial imperative that is deeper than instinct, more inbred in the genes than the urge to survive. The grasses on the Grassersee will perform their seasonal pavane ten thousand years after men have vanished from the planet.

Aboard the
Glory
, the monkeys race through the rig, loosing vast mirrors of skylar to the tachyon winds blowing from the galaxy’s distant center. Damon Ng lies in his rigger’s pod, Wired, but aware of the two newcomers he is bound to instruct in first principles.

Buele will be Wired first, as soon as
Glory
clears the orbit of the gas giant Wallenberg which the kaffir call Tutu. The girl, Broni Ehrengraf Voerster, will be made a full syndic when her convalescence is complete. She lies comfortably in the microgravity, aware that she will live many years.
Glory
has given her the gift of life.

Broni is aware, too, that she will never again see the mynheera who bore her and loved her. Intellectually, she is fascinated by the activity that has invigorated Glory. Emotionally, she is bereaved as she looks for the last time at the planetary seas and the single great continent of the world on which she was born.

Neurocybersurgeon Krieg is in his surgery, Wired, like the others, and watching closely the signals from the bio-medical sensors he implanted in Broni’s open chest only short days before. Krieg is well satisfied. The profit from Goldenwing voyages is often difficult to measure. This port call at Voerster Dietr considers a success.
We buried Han Soo
, he thinks,
and lost mad Jean. But we found two young Starmen. A more than fair exchange.

Anya Amaya is at the helm. She is, of all the people aboard, most closely connected to Glory. At the moment she is Glory, and will be until the great starship clears Luyten 726’s inner space and is outward bound. She is just now the least human of Glory’s syndics, but a part of Anya shares Duncan’s grief and loss.

The Master and Commander lies in his bed of gel, Wired to Glory as are the others, but far away in spirit. He idly caresses the sleek, furry shape of Mira, who senses his grief and will not leave him.
Be content, old tom
, she thinks.
I am here, and the great-queen-who-is-not-alive will guard us.
Duncan half understands the cat’s offer of comfort and his long fingers knead her fur at the base of her small, feral head.

Duncan is remembering. What he remembers happened days and hours ago, but the events seem as distant now as history.

She read from the book of Donne that he gave her:

Sweetest love, I do not goe,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for mee ....

He looks through the overhead transparency at the hectares of extending skylar.
Glory
is spreading her golden wings. Anya, naked in her pod, twists unconsciously, her fingers twitching as she feels the sails cup to the timeless winds.

Duncan searches the planet, whose aspect is beginning to change as
Glory
acquires delta-V. But there is no sign of the Voertrekker commandos, the highland invasion that Ian set in motion. No sign of cities or conflict. None of those things can be seen from space. Climbing above the horizon now the green point of light, Erde, which the kaffirs call Mandela. The planet shines brilliantly through the monofilament halo of the rig. And Duncan is reminded of Black Clavius, who wanted more than almost anything to stay aboard and return to space.

But Clavius has chosen instead to remain on the world of exile, which his people call Afrika, not Voerster.

The name sends a thrill of human jealousy through Duncan. Will she make her peace with Ian Voerster? Or will she live and die now as the New Elmi?

He hears Dietr whisper in his mind: “That no longer concerns you, Duncan. Let it go. She chose. Let it go.”

Glory
begins to tack across the solar wind pouring outward from the corona of Luyten 726. The aurora borealis paints the sky with rose and pink. More skylar spreads and
Glory’s
wings gleam with the light of heaven as she prepares to leave orbit.

At Sternhoem on the Sea of Grass the night is still. The Nachtebrise has dropped to a whisper. It only stirs the dead wings fallen from the spores dusting the dark ground around the observatory.

On the wall just under the dome of the building, Eliana Ehrengraf Voerster stands, face uplifted. She sees the change in the brightness of the golden star racing across the night from northwest to southeast.

“They are going, Cousin,” she says to Osbertus Kloster.

“Be not sad, Elmi,” the old man says.

For the first time she does not say, “Don’t call me that.”

Osbertus lays a hand on her wrist. He feels her pulse, strong and firm under the soft leather of her glove. “When will his child be born, Elmi? “

Eliana regards Osbertus Kloster with affection. “How did you know, old cousin?”

“You would not have left the Glory without that.”

“In the spring, when the spores bloom,” she says, and resumes her vigil, watching until the Goldenwing Glory disappears at last beyond the southeastern horizon of the Sea of Grass.