Glory's People (12 page)

The great queen had warned Mira not to allow her natural territoriality to cause conflicts. It was important that the strangers should not be distracted from whatever it was the dominant tom, Duncan, wished them to do.

Mira remembered that long ago, when she was not so well schooled by the world, she had been both frightened and enraged by the thing she sensed in the vast darkness around the great queen. To the small cat quantitative distinctions were unimportant. Measurements simply did not matter. Any distance she could not leap was simply large. But it was not empty. She had known that from the moment she had awakened sharing her thoughts with the great queen on the table of he-who-cuts. She had perceived the Outside as a great room in which a savage thing hunted for anything alive. According to the great queen, humans believed that cats killed for pleasure. This was untrue. Cats reveled in the hunt, but they took no pleasure in the taking of life. The space surrounding them, even on the homeworld, was so enormous and so cold and empty that only life warmed it.

Yet menacing Mira's world was a thing that killed for pleasure, and she had reacted to the threat as the Folk had been reacting since time began--with arched back, bared teeth and extended claws.

Duncan, the dominant tom, had sensed this at once. He was a creature of powerful perceptions and empathy. There were times, Mira thought, when she could imagine Duncan clad in fur, a yowling tom with a beautiful voice and ferocious scent. In time she learned to accept the impossibility of her sexual fantasy, but she would forever consider it with a powerful and savage pleasure. Duncan became effectively a member of Mira’s disciplined pride, which was a new thing among the Folk.

The other cats accepted Duncan because he was large and powerful--but also because Mira was matriarch, and set the standards. With their mother's milk, her offspring learned to defer to and accept hierarchy. The individual who did not know his place must fight for better. If he lost he was in danger of becoming an outcast. It was the Folk’s way of life. Mira’s patterns and abilities were bred into her blood and bone by ten thousand feline generations. Her new skills were only a gift from the great-queen-who-is-not-alive.

Mira was not yet totally at ease with human concepts such as “generations. “ But the great queen’s algorithms had been written by human beings, and she had begun imprinting Mira the instant she filed and saved the information that he-who-cuts had finished his work on Mira.

About this, the small queen made some judgments. Mira’s natural value system and
Glory’s
were almost identical. Both were at home with yes-or-no, go-or-no-go decisions.
Glory
did nothing to Mira to change her feline ways. Cats’ decisions seemed maddeningly deliberate to humans. And so they were. But once made they were instant and arbitrary, like a computer’s.

As leader of the pride, Mira decided for all. There was no appeal. There were many cats in the pride and some were larger and stronger than she. But Mira ruled. She was the queen, ready to enforce her choices with tooth and claw. Fortunately, the great-queen-who-is-not-alive was programmed to reject life-and-death conflict and seldom permitted it, even among the human folk.

Mira trilled a message to Clavius to cease his preening and pay attention to the view displayed by the holograph. He complied, understanding only a fraction of the information the great queen was supplying. Mira unsheathed her foreclaws in irritation and then retracted them. It was only now, after much teaching by the great queen, that she understood that she had the ability to be patient.

Clavius would learn, as would the others. Without knowledge, courage, shrewdness and, above all, an unfeline forbearance, the learning of the great queen, the courage of the humans and the wisdom of the Folk--all would vanish into emptiness.

Mira launched herself across the bridge to land, claws extended, on the fabric strips Duncan had caused to be placed everywhere around the great queen’s interior for the convenience of the Folk. From this new vantage point above the holograph Mira could identify the shuttle carrying the young queen, Broni, and the two sleds carrying the often frightened tom, Damon, and the persistent one, Buele.

It was Buele who seemed determined to become part of the pride. It was impossible, but Mira found she did not resent it as she once did. It made her aware that under the guidance of the great-queen-who-is-not-alive she, and all the Folk, were changing.

For a moment she allowed herself a flash of motherly satisfaction. Her offspring were, usually, a source of pleasure to her. There was Clavius, of course. Her particular favorite. In leisure moments she still groomed him as though he were a kitten, licking his ruff and broad head until the fur shone. Then there was Big, who was half again as broad as Clavius, a prodigious leaper and athlete with a regrettable--but forgivable--tendency to bully his siblings. Then there were Tail, Gem, Shadow, White Paw, and Stripes. Among the females, all of whom had inherited Mira’s small stature and graceful conformation, were Marissa, Beauty, Windstar, and Trekker. All names bestowed by the young queen, Broni. Names from her homeworld, Mira surmised from what the great queen said. Not all the pride had names. Naming was a human thing, one to which Mira was only now becoming accustomed. With or without names, Mira knew exactly where each member of the Folk was at any given moment and what he or she was doing.

Right now they were patrolling the vast cavern Broni and Damon had prepared for the accommodation of the strangers who were at this moment drawing near the great queen.

Mira felt the waves of half-electronic, half-neurological fear emanating from the Monkey House. The foolish critters were clinging to their sanctuary because they, too, felt the approach of human strangers.

Monkeys were inedible and they were too programmed to pose a threat to anyone. Yet in the Ross Stars, foolish men had callously killed one of the innocuous cyborgs. Perhaps, Mira thought, when matters were not so stressful, she would communicate with the foolish creatures. They had no true language of trills and cries, not even one of words like the humans. But perhaps she could manage.

After the human visitors were seen and judged.

She watched the sleds maneuvering to intercept the cloud of sparks that was rising from the curved lake of sunlight below. Mira had on rare occasion been a passenger on one of the small vehicles the great queen carried. At first she had not known exactly what was happening to her, but with the great queen’s all-knowing assistance, Mira began to interpret the information that flowed continuously through the tiny wire protruding from her skull.

She did not remember when, exactly, it was (cats were not great creators of time ladders) that she began to interpret what the human-folk were thinking. They were not always drogued, and at such times reading them was difficult. But when they, like she, were connected to the great-queen-who-is-not-alive, their mental images came through with great clarity.

Being with Duncan sometimes gave her solitary moments by a foggy gray sea and a chill, pebbled shore. At such times Mira would float in the null gravity, eyes unfocused, while nearby Duncan's mind would create pictures and strange, human-folk sounds: The sea of faith was once, too, at the full, and round Earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled
--Mira received clear images from the dominant tom’s strongly empathic mind. She understood them on a deep, inchoate, but powerful level. Clearly the human words moved him deeply with images of his homeworld.
I... hear its long, withdrawing roar... retreating to the breath of the night wind.
.. Memories stirred in her awakened mind. Not of the sea, but of the dark savannahs her ancestors had known--

Mira, born in space, saw the image of “the world” in Duncan’s mind. It was not the homeworld that gave his kind and hers life. Earth was a world Duncan had never actually seen. The true provenance of his mental image was another place, a place of rock and sea very like the place where the night wind blew down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world, but colder still and more distant. At such times Mira lay in air, transfixed by the richness of the images that flashed through her small brain.

Her ability to share Duncan’s dream became a source of sensual pleasure to her. Here, within the great-queen-who-is-not-alive, joys were shared. She understood that all things happened because other things happened. To accomplish this breakthrough she had to make connections that went beyond those customarily made by her species. She even had begun to realize that her own young offspring were not so swift of mind as she because, though he meant to be, he-who-cuts was not infallible.

The cats were learning, as were the great queen’s human-folk. But Mira was filled with anxiety. Though she did not yet grasp the true concept of time, she sensed that there was little left. The hungry beast waited just beyond the darkness.

Broni, alone in one of the larger shuttles, could hear Buele’s vocalizations clearly over the radio-link. The boy was talking to a cat, probably the one called Big, who was his favorite companion. Buele had a habit of carrying Big with him when he flew one of the enclosed sleds. Duncan did not appear to mind. He even accepted the absurd notion of Buele’s that eventually Buele would teach Big to fly a sled.

Broni was concentrating on the navigational holograph she was using to pilot the shuttle. She wanted her performance to be perfect, but Buele’s babble was distracting. She was fond of her uncle’s former potboy and tolerant of his peculiar notions, but this was
not
the time to be discussing the human concept of hell with one of the cats.

The Yamatan ships were all in sight and closing on
Glory
's orbit in preparation for landing aboard, and Duncan had entrusted Broni and Damon and Buele with the task of guiding the colonists in safely. A botched landing could seriously damage
Glory
--a possibility Broni did not even care to contemplate. Like all the Wired Ones, she was fiercely protective of the great Goldenwing.

But Buele rambled on:
“It should interest you, Big, this idea all humans have of ‘hell. ’ I don’t suppose cats have any such myths. You wouldn’t tell me if you did, would you? But have you considered the possibility that there really is a hell and that it lies in what the Yamatans call the Near Away? The devil might be real. He could be that thing that tried to kill us in the Ross Stars. Isn’t that of interest to you people, Big? You don’t mind if I say ‘you people,’ do you? I mean it as a compliment--”

Damon’s voice:
“For God’s sake, Buele, pack it in, will you? The colonists’ ships are approaching orbit. “

“I see them. Brother Damon. Just stay with me if you don’t. “

Broni suppressed an impulse to giggle. It took some doing to become accustomed to Buele’s innocent bluntness. But he had innate skills and abilities that had been recognized even on their homeworld of Voerster. She remembered clearly how he had helped Healer Tiegen and the Captain Of the dirigible
Volkenreiter
to a safe landing during that terrible storm near the Shield-wall. Probably if it hadn’t been for Buele, neither he nor she would have lived to become syndics.

But the way he did things and the things he said. She rolled her eyes momentarily away from the holograph and swiftly back again. Buele was, as the Cybersurgeon said, quite a piece of work.

Damon was replying angrily to Buele. Telling him that he could see perfectly well, thank you, and needed no assistance flying his sled to the rendezvous point.

Cybersurgeon Dietr from
Glory
's bridge deck:
“Less talk, if you please. Duncan and Amaya are probably listening while you embarrass them. “

Never, thought Broni. Duncan would never be embarrassed by things the younger Starmen said or did. He seemed to trust them completely, with a confidence-building self-assurance. It was probably part of his Captain’s persona, but Broni (and Buele, too, she suspected) would rather die than cause him concern.

With a flourish, she matched orbits with the advancing fleet of small spaceships. The shuttle was the leader of the welcoming formation, and Buele and Damon would have to match their actions to hers. That should keep the former Astronomer-Select’s potboy out of trouble for an hour or two. Of all the syndics aboard, Broni had the most empathic ability to pilot small craft. Her skill was not greater than Anya Amaya’s, she admitted. But it was certainly no less. Women seemed to have an innate talent for conning small spacecraft.

As the three auxiliaries from the Goldenwing drew to within a hundred kilometers of the Yamatan flotilla, Broni smiled with delight. The Yamatan mass-depletion ships were small, but they were slender as swallows with solar-cell wings not too unlike, at this distance, the wings that
Glory
spread. Tiny by comparison, but brave, Broni thought, the instincts of a Voersterian noblewoman showing through the decorum of a young female syndic about to meet the males of a fanatically paternalistic colonial society.

It had taken Broni the better part of a shiptime year to take to syndic ways. She still felt more at ease in a skinsuit, which was what she wore now. A grand skinsuit it was, too. Vibrant with embroidery and appliques of the constellations of Near Space picked out in gold and silver. Dietr Krieg had encouraged her to don finery. “It will not do to let these colonials outshine us, Broni liebchen. Use the replicators--let
Glory
outfit you like a princess.”

Broni ignored the temptation of reminding the Terrestrial that she was, in point of fact, a princess. Or as near as made no difference. On Voerster a Voertrekkersdatter was almost royal.

At fifty kilometers Broni could make out the ornate decorations on the Shogun’s barge. It was an odd combination of Yamatan spacecraft and ancient Japanese junk. Its solar cells resembled closely the battened sails she had seen in
Glory
's database, and the hull was decorated with dragons and demons with scales of brilliant gold that burned in the rose-colored sunlight of Tau Ceti.