Glory's People (11 page)

“Are you uncomfortable, Amaya-san?” Minamoto Kantaro showed his concern for Amaya with some reticence. Women were valued but not highly ranked on Yamato. “Females are often affected by null gravity.”

Amaya, her Centauri prickliness aroused, said, “I have spent the last six years in space, Daimyo.” In fact, the opulence of the salon aboard the Shogun’s barge rather dismayed her. Its classic Japanese elegance attracted her, and she disapproved of the attraction. There was still much New Earther in
Glory
's Sailing Master. “It takes a great deal more than null gravity to upset me,” she said primly. She knew she must restrain herself from marching into a feminist confrontation with the Lord of Yedo.

Anya stood with her eyes fixed on the distant horizon of the planet below. The vast stretches of empty, copper-colored sea moved swiftly beneath the climbing
Dragonfly
and her MD consorts. Directly ahead of the flotilla, all of Yamato’s natural satellites hung in one of their frequent conjunctions. Hideyoshi, smallest and brightest of the moons, and the scientific base that produced the MD ships accompanying
Dragonfly
, had only just risen from the planetary ocean. Above it, Nobunaga, the mining-colony moon, reflected with the color of rusting iron.

Above the smaller pair, the methane yellow and baleful disk of Tokugawa dominated the celestial zenith. It was surrounded with a halo of stars and the soft luminescence of Amaterasu’s zodiacal light. Many of the constellations familiar to Earth’s night sky could be seen here, only slightly distorted by distance. There were others, named by the Yamatans, that no native of Earth would recognize: the Shark, Amaterasu’s Comb, the Crucified Warrior. At the zenith shone the bright beacon of Alpha Carinae, known on Yamato as Ryukotsu--the Keel of Argo--and to
Glory
's syndics as Canopus, 165 light-years from Yamato, an impossible distance even for
Glory
's far-reaching wings.

For a moment Amaya allowed herself to think what space travelling might become if the ugly little ships accompanying them were the precursors of true hyperlight flight. The idea both thrilled and repelled her. Human reach would be unlimited, but mankind had a way of cheapening whatever became easy.

Perhaps, she thought, that was the purpose allotted the Terror in the great plan of the Universe. She grimaced. It was a thought more suited to her dour Thalassan Captain than to a woman of New Earth.

The
Dragonfly's
compartment was filled with magnificently clad--and armed--daimyos. Each lord of a Domain had with him a dozen retainers, all dressed in the manner of a Sixteenth-Century feudal-clan court. There had to be five hundred kilograms of archaic, useless, beautifully wrought weaponry in the barge’s salon. What odd people the Yamatans were, Amaya thought, modern in almost every sense of the word, skilled in technology beyond any other colonials, yet still choosing to costume themselves for special occasions as did their ancestors of nearly two millennia ago.

How human, she thought.

And then she smiled again, secretly, thinking that the phrase was better suited to the small, feral mind of Mira,
Glory
's cat.

Shogun Minamoto no Kami left the group of daimyos around Duncan and appeared at Anya’s side. “Does my spacecraft please you, Anya-san?”

“She is quite beautiful, Minamoto-sama,” Anya said as tactfully as she could manage. The ship’s salon was actually reminiscent of the teahouses she had studied in
Glory
's database on the inward journey from the Ross Stars. The room was panelled in real wood and there were brocaded tatami on the floor. Anya Amaya did not truly approve. Elsewhere in the vessel the flight crew worked in titanium compartments lined with flight instruments and gear, but here one stood in a Sixteenth-Century Japanese manor.

It was perplexing--and oddly touching
. But take care not to sentimentalize these people, Amaya
, she warned herself.
They are not what they seem to be
. “I have never seen a spacecraft quite like it,” she said neutrally.

A veiled smile crossed the old man’s lips. “Are you certain there are no Japanese among your ancestors, Anya-san? You have our gift of saying nothing most gracefully.” He glanced pointedly at Kantaro. It was an unmistakable command to withdraw. The younger man did so, with a formal bow.

“Try to forget what you have learned aboard your far-travelling ship of diplomacy,” the Shogun said. “I believe you to be intuitive, Anya-san. Perhaps it is that quality you Wired Ones call empathy. Whatever it may be, I ask you to put it at my service.” He inclined his head at the daimyos gathered in suspicious groups at the forward end of the salon. “The lords of Kai and Hokkaido. With them are the leaders of the
daibatsu
--do you know that word?”

“It is what you call the industrialists,
tono
.”

Minamoto acknowledged the use of the word for “lord” with an almost imperceptible nod. “They are a good bit more than that, Anya-san. On Yamato, the
daibatsu
is ancient history that people say no longer exists. Yet they are powerful men and they are suspicious of you and Kr-san. Their research departments have brought the mass-depletion engine to the point where short voyages at hyperlight speeds are possible. They suspect that as Goldenwing syndics you have good reasons either to take the technology for yourselves or to destroy it. They are not convinced there is a threat--out there.” He looked somberly at the stars beyond the aligned moons. “With Kai and Hokkaido we have the worst of antiquity and modern times. Kai is arrogant and Hokkaido is impoverished. Lord Yoshi imagines he is a genuine Takeda, and Lord Genji sits on his frozen island hoarding his bloodlines and guarding his poor treasury. They both would profit by your failure at Yamato.”

“We did not come to steal,” Anya said.

“
I
believe that, Anya-san,” the Shogun said. “But there should be no misunderstanding. Our MD ships represent a huge investment by the
daibatsu
.”

“Whereas, Shogun, we syndics risk only our lives, our ship, and the future of man in space,” Anya said icily.

“I do not blame you for resenting our caution, Anya-san. But we have always been a careful people. Please understand us. It is a great concession that our ruling caste has agreed to this conference aboard your Goldenwing.”

“I have studied your history,
tono
,” Anya Amaya said. “Our definition of caution is apparently not the same as yours. Unless the Yamatan word also carries with it the inference of ‘self-interested.’ “

The Shogun remained silent, his attention fixed on the visible stars.

“Tell the
daibatsu
, Shogun, that we Starmen have seen the enemy close by. It attacked us because we drew near to its preserves. It attacks your MD vessels because you are crossing a border. The two acts are alike. They vary only in degree. But the stakes are the same for us all. Tell your merchant lords that, Shogun.”

“Is that what your empathic sense tells you is the best course, Anya-san?”

“It is what my
every
sense tells me, Shogun. There is really no other choice.”

“Surrender?”

Several of the nearer daimyos were now listening to the conversation between their Shogun and the
gaijin
woman.
It is just as well
, Anya thought.
Duncan might give these people an illusion of escape. I will not
.

“There is no surrender,
tono
.” She looked at the circle of faces that now surrounded them. “Only annihilation.”

Duncan had joined the group at the salon window. Instinctively, the Yamatans looked to him for masculine confirmation.

“What my Sailing Master tells you is true,” he said. “You have had your own reports of the disturbance when something from the Near Away swallowed still another of your spacecraft.”

A daimyo of Kyushu said, “We are by no means certain that something from the Near Away is responsible for our losses. Even if we concede that what you say is true,
gaijin-sama
. We have yet to hear what can be done about it.”

Duncan appreciated the adroitness of the Yamatan’s use of the term
gaijin-sama
. The Starmen were being called intruders and outsiders, but politely, in terms customarily reserved for lords of substantial domains and leaders of clans.

“The Terror--we use that term for lack of a better, since we know so little about it--the Terror appears to be attracted by strong emotions,” Duncan said. “
Glory
's Cybersurgeon thinks we might someday be able to avoid it by shielding our emotions. I find that doubtful. We cannot learn to hide again--as we once did on the savannahs long ago. Not out here, Shogun. We are a starfaring species and we will be so until we go extinct. Which might be soon, Shogun. That is why we are in Amaterasu space.

Your scientists have forced the door to open a bit more. The doorkeeper sees us even more clearly.”

“To speak of any natural phenomenon as ‘the Terror,’
gaijin-sama
, seems--medieval,” Lord Yoshi, the daimyo of Takeda, said with lofty distaste. The incongruity of such a statement from a man dressed as a Sixteenth-Century samurai seemed not to have occurred to the Yamatans.

It was a fine point, Duncan thought, but the time to address the matter was not now. Duncan wondered which of the assembled nobles was responsible for the ninja attack in Yedo. The act spoke volumes about Yamatan attitudes. It appeared that the
daibatsu
thought the Wired Ones were a bigger threat than any mysterious force that struck out of nowhere.

Duncan said, “We speak of the Terror, Lords. You, of course, will speak of it in whatever terms seem suitable to you. But you must speak of it. The faster and the farther you travel, the more surely you will attract the enemy.” His gray eyes were level and steady. “We theorize that the Terror may not even live in the universe we know, or whether or not the physical laws we know apply to it. My suspicion is that they do not. I am not cosmologist enough to know. For that we ask your help. Your scientists are among the best of the colonials. But it can be deflected--our ship deflected it in the Ross Stars by beginning the process of putting all living things aboard into cold-sleep.”

“You ordered that, Kr-san?”

“Yes, Minamoto-sama.”

Duncan had the strong feeling that Minamoto no Kami and most of the rulers assembled in
Dragonfly's
salon approved. These were people, after all, to whom the act of seppuku was noble.

Duncan said, “I may be wrong in saying that it seeks--anything. We are certain of only one thing. It has an enormous power to kill, and I believe that anything that kills wantonly can be killed.” He looked at the members of the gathering evenly. “You have learned to duplicate one of its powers. You can open a Gateway. Now we must go through that Gateway.”

A daimyo of Kyushu, old and crusty in his manner, said, “It seems rather like an executioner discovering rope and offering it to lower us all into hell.”

“Not quite,” Anya interjected. “No one is offering Yamato rope, My Lords. Something quite different. See.”

At that moment
Glory
had appeared above the planet’s horizon and began its climb toward the zenith. It was a stunning sight, and as the seconds passed and
Dragonfly's
orbit began to synchronize with
Glory
's, the view became dazzling.

Glory
aligned nearly perfectly with Yamato’s natural satellites. The effect was breathtaking. At first the Goldenwing seemed to hover over the disk of Moon Tokugawa, her furled wings ready to embrace the distant satellite. Above Tokugawa Hideyoshi and Nobunaga reflected the coppery light of Tau Ceti like mirrors of hammered bronze.

The decreasing distance between
Glory
and
Dragonfly
began to put the scene into scale, but no changes in perspective could detract from
Glory
's fantastic dominance. Her skylar was almost entirely furled save for the steadying jibs and spanker, relatively small, but brilliant, scalene triangles of ruddy golden light at bow and stem.

At the moment
Glory
flew in a vertical orientation to the planet below, so that the twenty kilometers of deck and masts was seen from far above, yet clearly in the airlessness of space, and surrounded with the zodiacal glow of her incredibly dense and complex monofilament rigging. In this attitude,
Glory
resembled a mythic creature. Anya felt the strong surge of satisfaction from Duncan. Her empathic sense assured her that this was precisely what Duncan wanted--that the nobles of Yamato should see
Glory
as not only beautiful, but formidable.

“My ship, Daimyos,” Duncan Kr said. “Within the hour I shall be honored to welcome you aboard her.”

Mira crouched on the young human queen’s nest, eyes fixed on the holograph displayed in the still air of the heart-of-the-lair. Inside the container, the young tom the human folk called Clavius groomed his elevated hind leg as Mira had taught him in kittenhood. It was a gesture Duncan spoke of as playing the cello--whatever a cello might be. But this was not the time for playing or grooming.

Clavius was not as clever as Mira would wish, but he was quicker than any of the other members of the pride, male or female. He was as clever as most of the humans in all that mattered, swift and strong, and inevitably given to tomcat vanity. We still have much to learn, Mira thought, knowing that the great-queen-who-is-not-alive was listening.

The other Folk were stationed throughout the length and breadth of the great queen; each had, at Mira’s instruction, established a territory over which they were enjoined by the great queen to watch. New humans were coming aboard and Mira remembered too well what had happened the last time strangers had been allowed within the world.

All her cognitive skills increased Mira began to think of the great queen as both a being and a world. This seeming contradiction did not disturb her. The Folk lived with contradictions--had done for thousands of years. It was a normal part of coexisting with human beings.