Glory's People (10 page)

The encounter with the Nimrudite pirates had changed all that. The critters had seen human beings at war with one another, and a monkey had died at the hands of a human invader. The monkeys had been shocked. It was a measure of
Glory
's monkeys’ loyalty that despite a gratuitous act of murder, the small cyborgs had continued to perform their assignments nominally on the voyage from Ross 248.

But the psychic disturbance that reverberated through the Amaterasu System when the portal from the Near Away opened finished what the killing at Nimrud had begun. It totally immobilized the half-chimp, half-computer constructs without whom no Goldenwing could be sailed.

A frustrated and dismayed Dietr Krieg had a psychiatric term for the condition. It was fugue. Not knowing what else to do, he had despatched Damon to the Monkey House to deal with the problem. It was Damon who dealt most intimately with the monkeys, so it must be he who could persuade the critters to return to work. The trouble was that the monkeys were not human beings, and argument and persuasion were not likely to have any effect on them.

Suited for space, Damon floated in the light gravity of the Monkey House. He was baffled by his charges’ behavior, by their refusal to move, to communicate, or even to acknowledge his presence among them. He sensed that they were terrified and required leadership. But leadership was not the young Rigger’s strong suit.

Damon drifted in the central bay, looking down the long, dark rows of power-racks, each holding a silent monkey. He could feel them looking at him. God knew what their thoughts were. If cybernetic organisms thought.

The notion had a sting like that of the punishing stiletto blades carried by the aristocrats of his forested homeworld. After six years under the command of Duncan Kr, it was an unacceptable thought. Of
course
cybernetic organisms thought. What else was
Glory
but a vast cyborg? And her thoughts were vastly more profound than those of any aboard her.

“Damon, do you read me?”

Thank God
, he thought. Duncan.
“I read you, Captain. Do you see what is happening aboard?”

“Well enough, boy. Don’t try to force the situation. We will deal with them when we have to. “

“It will be difficult to get under weigh without monkeys, Duncan. “

“Dietr, belay the order to prepare to leave orbit. “

“Aye, Captain. “
There was enormous relief in the Cybersurgeon’s sending.

“Make ready to take aboard a scientific and political delegation, Dietr. I have come to an agreement with the Shogun. Damon, you will have to hangar a squadron of small spacecraft. Can you manage it without the monkeys?”

“Yes, Captain. Broni and Buele can help.” Damon sent. “Mass-depletion-powered ships, Captain? “

“Yes.”

Damon could not resist asking,
“Are they as fast as the rumors say?”

Dietr interceded testily. “What does that matter right now? Captain, the Planetary News Net is saying something about an accident in space. We felt something--ah, familiar. Is it what we suspected it was?”

“Yes.”

Damon sent,
“It’s what frightened the monkeys. I am sure of it.”

“It frightened the Yamatans, too. At just the right time.”

“Is this meeting going to be political or scientific, Duncan?”
The surgeon’s communications were tightly controlled, drained, insofar as possible, of emotional content.

“It will be a gathering. That is all I can say without guessing. Yamato has a unique political structure. There are no real nations, only clans and families. We have to convince the daimyos to go outside.”

Aboard
Glory
there was silence. Then Broni’s sending came through fresh and clear:
“The Yamatans surely understand we must fight together. “

All could sense Duncan’s regard for Eliana Ehrengraf’s daughter.
“I hope so, Broni. I do sincerely hope so. But there is self
-
interest, too. They have spent a century developing mass-depletion power. They have a reason to resist being confined in Near Space. Damon, in addition to six MD ships the Shogun’s barge will be coming aboard. I want you and Buele to meet us at a thousand kilometers and guide us in. Make certain that Glory is her most impressive. Open an ob-deck for the visitors and make their quarters as comfortable as possible. They think we are archaic. Be prepared to make them think otherwise. “
Duncan addressed them all.
“Be Wired as often as you can, and keep checking with
Glory
. I don’t want any misunderstandings. “

“Aye, Captain. “

“You felt the event in space, “
Duncan sent
. “What was it like aboard? “

Dietr said
, “It sent the monkeys into fugue. “

“Very likely. Start considering how you are going to bring them out of it. “

Everyone aboard
Glory
had felt the burning death of the Yamatans aboard the distant spacecraft. The syndics had recognized the threat instantly. But only Duncan thought ahead.

There was a flare of feral anger that shook both Dietr and Damon. It was directed at Duncan, but it was carelessly directed and enormously demanding. Though it was not couched in human words its meaning was heatedly clear. A translation into human language would be as plain as it was angry:
“Why are you not here with the Folk where you belong, defending what you must defend?”
There followed an unmistakable demand that Duncan return at once to the lair.

“Ah, Mira, “
he sent.
“Very soon now. “

The cat was not placated. Mira had a strong sense of Terrestrial, mammalian distribution of duties. At this time the proper place for the dominant tom was with the Folk and the great-queen-who-was-not-alive. That was the way of life.

“She is very upset, Duncan, “
Dietr said.
“All the cats are. “

Damon said,
“I think she can communicate with the monkeys. “

“I hope so, “
Duncan sent.
“Someone will have to or Glory will never leave this system. “

Dietr’s comment was devoid of his usual bravado.
“Lieber Gott, Master and Commander, I was never really cut out to be a warrior.”

“You’re warrior enough, Dietr, “
Duncan said.

Every living thing aboard and in the loop received an emanation of power from the Goldenwing and her Captain. To Damon it was like an infusion of pure courage. He hoped that it was the same for the others.
If we fail now
, Damon thought,
we have come as far in space as men ever will. . .
.

He felt Mira and her pride making themselves large, ruffs and guard-hairs erect and extended, ready for battle, and he had a small but potent epiphany.
“They call themselves the Folk. “

Buele interceded powerfully.
“You should think of them that way, Damon. It pleases them.“
Damon had never received so clear a sending from a fellow syndic. Not even from Duncan.

Buele meant the cats, of course. How could he know what the animals felt and how was he able to state it in such simple, human--no,
Terrestrial
--terms?

“In ten orbits, then, “
Duncan sent, preparing to break contact. The message was clearly for Dietr Krieg, and the Cybersurgeon acknowledged it--and the shift of responsibility--willingly.

“Aye, Captain, “
he sent.

Ten orbits was nine hours eight minutes Standard, Damon thought. What he had learned from
Glory
's database about the splendid Yamatans had rather intimidated him. But, the exchange with Buele reminded him, even out here, they were all children of the Earth.
That is the most important truth of all our lives
, he thought.

Broni Ehrengraf, at her Astroprogrammer’s post on the bridge, listened to the nuances she detected in Duncan’s sending. With his customary intuitiveness, he had picked up the feelings of tension that flowed from the ship. It was more than a simple horror of recalling the fight in the Ross Stars. It was the enervating fear that despite anything that could be done, failure and horrible death lay at
Glory
's end.

Broni’s carelessly held religious beliefs had always taught that the universe lay balanced between the powers of good and evil. Kaffir preachers on her homeworld sang of Armageddon, the Final Battle at the end of the world. Such matters had always seemed quaint to the daughter of the Voertrekkerpraesident of Planet Voerster. But
Glory
's encounters with the Terror changed that. Her religious training had been too cursory to provide comfort, but her personal experience at Ross 248 was a real memory and it terrified her.

Now the Terror had struck again--across the Amaterasu System, to be sure, but what did time and distance matter?

Duncan’s personal command was like the touch of his hand.
“Broni, “
he sent.
“You are our resident aristocrat. That makes you chief of protocol. In ten orbits the daimyos are visiting in state, or as much state as they can manage aboard their MD ships. Have
Glory
brief you on what they will expect. Will you do that, please?”

Somehow, Duncan’s manner was bantering, and Broni knew the Captain was smiling. She sensed that the others aboard, Damon, Buele and Cybersurgeon Krieg, responded to it and to one another. It seemed to warm the air they breathed. Now Damon and Buele were exchanging sendings about either the cats or the monkeys. She could not be sure which. But the particulars didn’t matter. Tension had diminished aboard
Glory
.

What a beautiful man you are, Duncan Kr
, she thought.

The thought was unshielded and there came instant, sardonic comments from the other syndics aboard. She accepted them without comment. She had what she wanted: a swift, unguarded flash of warmth and affection from Duncan.

And perched on the curve of Broni’s pod, Mira regarded young human female with the intent, inscrutable stare that only the Folk can manage.

The bridge of the Shogun’s barge,
Dragonfly
, a reaction-powered craft of ten meters’ beam, was crowded with Yamatan clansmen dressed for space in colorful pressure suits over which they wore their traditional finery. Duncan had explained in some detail that EVA gear would not be needed since the barge and the MD craft accompanying it would all be accommodated in one of
Glory
's multiplicity of empty holds. But plainly the Yamatans had only a vague notion of the dimensions of the vessel they would soon be boarding and fully expected to walk her unprotected decks.

It appeared to be a quirk of the colonial man to forget the nature of the ships that had carried his ancestors into Near Space. Pictorial evidence abounded, but the ships were overbearing. There was a reluctance among Earth’s children to acknowledge the vastness of the ancient technology.

The result was that colonials almost always suffered culture shock when they approached a Goldenwing. The reality of
Glory
and her sisters was stunning to men and women who had spent their lives either downworld or, at most, in low orbit.

The
Dragonfly
was decorated for the occasion with flags bearing the
mon
of the Minamotos, their silk held extended by frames in the airless void. The barge was a substantial ship used by the Shoguns of Yamato primarily for inspections and planetary surveys from orbit. As spacecraft went, the
Dragonfly
went slowly. It was a ceremonial craft, gilded and decorated like the ships that once had sailed the seas around the Japanese Home Islands on Earth. The sled Damon and Anya had ridden downworld from
Glory
was stowed (with some difficulty) in the belly of
Dragonfly
. The barge’s Captain, a gray-haired samurai named Honda, the head of a clan that had served the Minamotos for two hundred years, had been cautioned to keep a sharp lookout for the small craft that had been launched from the Goldenwing to guide
Dragonfly
and the accompanying flotilla of MD ships to rendezvous with
Glory
.

Anya Amaya, uncomfortable but resplendent in a brocaded kimono (a gift from the Shogun she was assured she must accept) stood with Minamoto Kantaro and several other shogunal court notables (whose names she had great difficulty pronouncing or even remembering) near the forward-facing quartz windows.
Dragonfly
was still laboring into orbit, struggling to match the orbital parameters sent down from
Glory
. The effort created a low gravity and a disorienting pitch to all onboard movement.

From where Amaya stood she could see two of the MD craft accompanying
Dragonfly
. To Amaya the experimental light-speed ships were unprepossessing. If anyone had ever told the New Earth woman that she had the aesthetic sensibilities of an artist, she would have scorned the notion. Centauri colonists were known for their hard-rock feminism, political intolerance and a well-developed taste for severity in all things. Amaya’s nurturing had been as austere as any New Earther’s, and she had been sold to
Glory
's syndicate because she had denied the Population Authority’s right to artificially inseminate her. In the absence of a Goldenwing fortuitously in orbit, her punishment could have been far worse. Nothing in Amaya’s early life as a New Earth clone had nurtured aesthetic appreciation. But life aboard
Glory
had remade her. At this moment the beautiful kimono she wore seduced her (comfort was another matter--as was wearing finery over space gear), as other fine or beautiful things often did now.

The bronze-colored clouds below her pleased her innate sense of color, and she awaited with pleasure the moment when
Glory
, in all her splendor, would appear above the advancing planetary horizon.

Anya regarded Kantaro-san’s handsome face and wondered what his reaction would be to his first true sight of a Goldenwing in space. Not an image, but the real thing. For that matter, how would the Shogun react? In the Ross Stars,
Glory
had awed the bitter folk of Nimrud and had made them a trifle less formidable. But for that, the intervention of the Terror might have finished them all while they were fighting among themselves. She shivered at the memory.