NOT A QUESTION OF ETHICS Nothing in his brief earlier visit to Voertrekkerhoem had prepared Black Clavius for the complexity of The Voerster’s kraal. What he now saw was a formidable fortress housing and sustaining not only the Voertrekker-Praesident and his family and staff, but also a brigade of Trekkerpolizei and hundreds of servants and bureaucrats.At the conclusion of his long flight from the south, Black Clavius had been deposited at the landing ground known as Lufthavan, the police airship base at Voertrekkerhoem. Ordinary flights from the southwest coast to the cities and towns of the north and east did not depart from Lufthavan. Civilian travelers used the much larger airship ground north of the capital.When Clavius debarked from the police dirigible, he was immediately taken into custody by a detachment of the Voertrekker-Praesident’s personal police-guard detachment, known as the Wache, of whom there were said to be one thousand. Within this corps d’elite was secreted a clandestine, almost furtive element of Voertrekker society.
