Glory by Alfred Coppel Read Free Book Online Page B

help for pain--hung from his great shoulders. From it depended an ancient, beautifully inlaid balichord. The instrument’s strings thrummed musically at each step as Clavius strode toward the distant light on the dark shape of the Sternberg.
    The sky giants, drops of molten light, were ranked across the heavens from zenith to horizon. Drache the Dragon shone with pure white brilliance; Thor, the War God, had a bloody hue. Wallenberg, deKlerk, and Smuts were like blue diamonds. And Erde was a magnificent green, the green of emeralds, the green of stormy seas. At this time of the year the configuration of the gas giants changed nightly as a radically elliptical orbit swung Voerster swiftly past the slower-moving outer planets.
    The kaffirs, of course, had different names for the giants. Drache was Angatch, the supreme and terrifying god of Madagascar. The companion five giants were called razanes, for the ghostly attendants of Angatch. Individually they were named Chaka, Tutu, Nampa, Mbutu, and Mandela. An eclectic pantheon, to be sure, Clavius thought.
    The Starman wondered whether it was fit that he should be tolerant of so many pagan images in the religion of the kaffirs, or if he should speak out. He had been thinking of this and, as he walked, discussing it with God, whom he knew well.
    “‘O, Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy displeasure. Have mercy on me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed.’”
    The verse was a favorite of Black Clavius, one he addressed to God whenever he suspected he had not been as upright as he should be. Clavius often addressed himself to God in the words of the Psalmist, who had also been a favorite of the Almighty.
    The cold was deep out on the savannah, but Clavius took no notice. He loved to walk under the thickly starred night sky of Voerster. And he loved to confound God with his skill at remembering the Book. He looked with affection at God’s face, the diamond-bright sky.
    There were other Books, of course. In his travels he had found many. But it was the language of the First Book that gave him the most pleasure. Sometimes it seemed to him that when he spoke to the Lord in the language of the Book, the Lord used the same language to reply in a voice undimmed by distance or time. What were parsecs and centuries, after all, to the Creator of the universe?
     
    The dust of the savannah trail underfoot had the pungent smell of the native necrogenes. How strange it was, and how very sad, that the beasts of Voerster--warm-blooded or cold--were all born in the belly of the parent who must inevitably die as the young ate its way into the world, to be sustained in its first days of life by the corpse of the lifegiver. The ways of the Lord were prodigious indeed. Clavius understood that each world that had been given life made its own sacrifices to pass it on. Compared to the placental mammals of Earth, the beasts of Voerster had a far more difficult racial choice. They had only self-immolation to drop into the sacred balance of life. Was that really fair?
    Clavius understood that the necrogenes were one of God’s experiments, probably discarded with hardly a second thought from the Almighty.
    From time to time Clavius felt it his duty to remind God that he owed more kindness to all creatures, even to the primitive creatures of Voerster.
    And what about Voerster’s adopted children? Clavius wondered. Voertrekkers and their kaffirs colonizing Voerster had not been God’s idea, but Man’s. Still, the father should protect the child. On this subject, God had been silent all night.
     
    Clavius had been walking southeast for three days and four nights, but he was unwearied. On Earth he had massed one hundred thirty kilograms. Here, under .96 gravity, he massed slightly more than one hundred twenty. But that still made him a very large and heavy man on Voerster.
    His head was covered with nappy, tightly curled hair turning gray. He had a