Glory by Alfred Coppel

revolting.
    “Well, Tiegen? I am waiting.”
    “With respect, mynheera...” Tiegen felt a flash of fear. Eliana clearly expected him to say that he would prevent The Voerster doing anything so harsh as giving Broni over to a matrimonial rape in an environment that would tax even a healthy woman beyond endurance. Eliana Ehrengraf Voerster was asking for an ally. No, for a coconspirator. And on Voerster, the Voertrekker-Praesident had the power to condemn. By simple fiat, if he chose.
    “Please, mynheera,” Roark said. “Be very careful what you say.” What you say to me , he thought.
    “I intend to stop him,” she said. “My husband is not God.”
    Tiegen Roark sucked in a shallow breath, “I cannot listen to you, mynheera.”
    Eliana’s face showed the emotion she was feeling. “Are you so very much afraid, Tiegen?” she asked bitterly.
    “Her illness will dissuade him, mynheera,” Roark said. “But if he persists--it is his right to choose the time and circumstances of the Voertrekkersdatter’s marriage. It is the law, mynheera.”
    Eliana Voerster seemed to withdraw into some stratospheric, icy height. “I thank you for telling me that, Healer.”
    “When the Voerster returns from the Convocation, perhaps we could suggest a stay at Einsamberg for the Voertrekkersdatter,” Roark said. “The mountain air--”
    “Thank you,” Eliana Voerster said. “I will take it up with my husband.”
    Tiegen Roark felt as though his heart had turned to stone. Eliana’s withdrawal was near to complete.
    “I hope,” he said, with what dignity, he could muster, “that the black Starman is able to amuse mynheera Broni. I am told he is very clever.”
    “Good morning to you, Healer,” Eliana said. “I will watch with my daughter now until morning.”
     
    In the great bed, Broni lay half-sleeping. She could hear the murmuring voices of her mother and the Healer in the passageway. She could feel the emotions they were experiencing as a kind of milky star stream, rather like the currents of stars in the moonless skies of Voerster. She often used night images and star visions to explain to herself what it was she had seen and felt since she was a small child. Once her mother had told her that she, too, had experienced the same things when she was a very young girl at Ehrengraf Kraal at Einsamberg. But Eliana no longer had the gift. Broni could tell.
    Before Tiegen and her mother had awakened her, Broni had been having such lovely dreams. Familiar dreams of warm summer skies and fields of flowers such as never were on Planet Voerster. The fact was, Broni thought, that God was showing her the place in heaven where she would breathe the scents of spring and run, as she had never been able to do, through fields of real grass ablaze with true wildflowers.
    Her mother’s sharp, imperious anger with the Healer flashed through Broni and she shut her eyes tight and buried her face in the deep pillows, saddened by the conflict between the two outside her door. Didn’t they understand that everything was already decided? That before year’s end Broni Ehrengraf Voerster would be gone from this life?
     

7. A LATE NIGHT MEETING IN VOERSTERSTAAD
     
    I cannot do it , thought Ian Voerster. I simply cannot bring myself to do this thing.
    He stared across the table at the Kraalheer of the Fontein Kraal--known to everyone as Winter Kraal, for the spirit of the place. By the Lord God , the Voertrekker-Praesident thought, what would our mutual ancestors have thought of such a creature? The dark gossip of early experiments by the ruthless biogeneticists among the First Landers always came to mind when one faced a Highlander at close range.
    Vikter Fontein was but 152 centimeters tall. In the old English measure used by the First Landers, five feet and one inch. He massed 144 kilos, half again what a normal man might, and this bulk was strangely apportioned over his barrel-like frame. His waist and midriff were large, but made to seem