Glory's People (20 page)

This ornate, antique ceremonial charade with modem men playing at ancient warriors was simply a way of delivering a verdict that could not be countered. In such a situation, the mere fact of another attempt at Zen murder was irrelevant.

Kantaro signalled to pages standing by. They brought camp stools and a heated flask of sake. Drinking bowls were produced and filled. Minamoto no Kami said through his steel mask, “We are not yet done, Kr-san.”

He moved to the center of the semicircle of lords and began to speak in ancient, archaic Japanese. He lifted his bowl and signalled Duncan and Amaya to drink. Then he threw the bowl to the tatami and raised his fan.

For several minutes he spoke in a harsh and strident, even angry, voice. When he had finished he elevated the fan in a kind of salute and counted three emphatic thrusts into the air. The Lords knelt silently, unwilling to move. Again the Shogun shouted at them, emphasizing his words with movements of the fan.

Suddenly Kantaro leaped to his feet and raised his own war fan, echoing the Shogun’s cries.

Minamoto no Kami glared at the Lord of Kai over his steel mask. He thrust the fan menacingly at Yoshi Eiji again and again.

Lord Yoshi struggled to his feet as the Shogun held the fan under his chin like an ax blade. Yoshi made the explosive noise Yamatans used to indicate total compliance. He raised his own fan and held it up for all the Lords to see. But his hand was trembling.

The remainder of the council hesitated. Yoshi shouted at them. One after another they laid their fans down on the tatami, rose to their feet, and filed out of the screened circle. When the last of them had gone, leaving only Kantaro, Yoshi and their retainers within the screened-in circle, the Shogun’s mask came down. Other pages took Kantaro’s and Yoshi’s. Duncan was somehow not surprised to see that the Lord of Kai was pale, and grateful when Minamoto no Kami called for more sake and the drinking began.

It had been as stereotyped as a Noh play.

What Minamoto no Kami had done was divide his strength--ordinarily a sin against the rules of warfare. But not here and now. There was a dictum of the teacher of war Sun Tzu that said, “Use your force wisely. If victory is foreclosed, yet protect what you can.”

Minamoto no Kami remained at the point of greatest danger. But his homeworld would receive the best protection he could offer it. But why keep Lord Yoshi here? A more unwilling warrior did not exist under the Tau Ceti sun.

In time, Duncan thought. Perhaps in time he would understand the complex old man.

Minamoto Kantaro remained troubled. Well you should, Duncan thought. You have explanations to make.

He looked back at the Shogun. The man suddenly looked very old and very weary. Duncan asked, “How many ships, Minamoto-sama?” It was not a time to ask, but he had to know.

“Six ships, Kr-san. Two of mine and four of Lord Yoshi’s.”

“Not what I had hoped for, Shogun.”

“Karma, Kr-san.”

Duncan appreciated the irony. “If you say so, Minamoto-sama.” Duncan hesitated. “But I am concerned for your safety, Lord Shogun.”

Minamoto no Kami stood in the center of a circle of abandoned war fans. “That is of no consequence, Starman.”

“Your choice, Shogun,” Duncan said.

The retainers had fallen back to converse in small groups. Yoshi Eiji looked sick with fear.

Duncan glanced at Kantaro in subdued conversation with Anya Amaya and wondered,
Who will rule on Yamato if the Shogun dies?

And then:
Will anyone?

Free of his ceremonial armor and silk brocades but not of his other concerns, Minamoto Kantaro stood on the deserted bridge of the barge
Dragonfly
watching the last of the withdrawing mass-depletion craft. It moved carefully down the length of the vast hangar, through the open valve and into space.

The pilot, Baka Ie, a low-ranking member of the Baka clan of Hokkaido, had impressed Lord Genji, his daimyo, with his skill at maneuvering the clumsy little MD ships. Normally, Baka would never have been trusted with so valuable a piece of equipment as an MD craft. Hokkaido could afford only three, and even that had strained Lord Genji’s resources. But Yamatan traditions were inflexible. A thousand or more years ago on Earth, Japanese nobles had been forced by their Tokugawa Shoguns to spend lavishly, living at the Court, so that they would have little left to spend on rebellion. There had never been a rebellion on Planet Yamato, but every daimyo was expected to spend money on spacecraft. Lord Genji, old and distinguished though he might be, could not be spared this drain on his meagre resources. Hokkaido had provided four MD craft to the fleet that had risen from the planet for the conference aboard Goldenwing
Gloria Coelis.

Kantaro had enjoyed viewing the elegant way the Hokkaidan MD had lifted from the hangar deck, rotated while hovering above the fabric floor, and then powered straight for and through the open valve into space. It had been a masterful job of piloting. Kantaro himself was considered a polished pilot of small spacecraft, but he was no match for the natural talents of Baka Ie.

The unhandsome young man from the glacial fields of Hokkaido had been beside himself with joy before departure. He had secretly hoped that his daimyo would allow the three Hokkaidan ships to remain with the Goldenwing and partake of the dangers to come, opening the way to promotions and preferments from the Shogun. But this hope had come to nothing. Lord Genji and his noble retainers had no intention of putting their three MD ships at risk. It was not for lack of fighting spirit, Kantaro realized. Hokkaido, lacking very nearly everything else, was well supplied with the spirit of the bushi. The Genji didn’t lack for brave men. What they were short of was money.

They claimed descent, like so many Yamatans, from the gods. In actual fact they were descended from nobles defeated at the Battle of Sekigahara on Earth in 1600. Their basic trouble was picking the wrong sides in war; they had sided with the Toyotomi against the Tokugawa fifteen centuries ago and were still paying for it. It was not their courage that was in question, but their judgment.

Baka Ie had hoped to break out of his small circle of poverty by fighting the demons the Wired Ones claimed were ranting about in space. It had been a forlorn hope at best. But much to Baka’s surprise, a compliment about his pilotage from Shogun Minamoto no Kami had been noted by the young man’s daimyo--and as a reward Baka received the right to change his name. Though this was a frequent thing among the upper classes, Baka was descended from first peasants and then tanners on Earth, and from common laborers on Yamato. Such people had, in antiquity, been given contemptuous names by samurai who tormented them. Baka meant “fool,” “idiot,” “moron.” During the Jihad it had meant even worse. Bakas had followed the Muslim armies as cleaners of latrines and, when needed, as beasts of burden.

The reward cost the daimyo of Hokkaido nothing, but no honor could have pleased Baka--soon to be Ashikaga--more.

The changing of names was a quintessentially Japanese tradition. The great warrior peasant Lord Hideyoshi, who helped to found the Japanese nation, ended his days as the exalted Taiko (he was never given the title of Shogun) Toyotomi.

The honor did not save his family from destruction at the hands of Tokugawa Ieyasu, but at least they died as members of the Clan Toyotomi, rich and cushioned by honors until the day they committed seppuku in their burning castle while the soon-to-be-Shogun Tokugawa watched.

In Baka Ie’s case, the name change was promised for the day of arrival back in Hokkaido. Minamoto Kantaro approved wholeheartedly. Kantaro’s aristocracy did not prevent him from understanding just how large a triumph this name change was for the unfortunately yclept Baka. And he considered this as he watched the last of the Hokkaidan ships clear the hatch and began his prereentry orbit. The MD would be seen once again on
Glory
’s next orbit, and Kantaro expected Baka to express his happiness as Yamatan pilots often did, with elegant maneuvers.

For a moment the small craft was limned against the ruddy disk of Yamato.
Glory
had not yet begun to move from orbit, and the departing mass-depletion ships were strung out like a necklace of silvery beads in the light of the Tau Ceti sun.

The valve through which the ships had departed, an iris five hundred meters across when dilated, began to contract. It closed slowly, like the aperture of a camera. It would take ten minutes for it to secure, and as long again for the hangar to repressurize.

The Shogun, fatigued by the antique formalities of the “bakufu camp” war-fan ceremonies, had retired to his quarters. The pageantry with the screens, the fans, the armor and camp stools was all very well, thought Kantaro, but the simple fact was that the colony planted on Yamato by the Goldenwing
Hachiman
was millennia past the true meaning of such ceremonials, and had been even on the day when the First Landers had touched Yamatan soil.

One day
, Kantaro thought,
our foolish worship of the old ways will be the death of us
. He shuddered at his own choice of words.

The holographs, both Yamatan and ship-generated, were dark now, leaving one vulnerable to the overpowering size of the nearly empty hold. The forested tableland of the Shogun’s garden had been replaced by a vast plain of monofilament skylar-reinforced fabric. The light came from glow disks set into the distant walls and overhead. The effect was one of sere emptiness.

Kantaro wondered what it would be like to live for years aboard a vessel larger than a planetesimal, and as empty of life. Surely these Wired Starmen were far stranger than they appeared to be.

Kantaro’s original involvement in the conspiracy to meet the syndics with a ninja lazegun in the city square of Yedo was now open to serious question. The presence in the Amaterasu System of
Glory
and her syndics created a situation unlike any he had ever experienced. He would have to confess his complicity to Kr-san. And to his uncle as well. That might mean a slit belly. There was no way of knowing until the situation was faced. The first ninja had paid for his mistake with his life in a spectacular act of suicide. Not, Kantaro’s orderly mind admonished, strictly seppuku. The word referred to a ceremonial opening of the abdomen, not the head.

And what method will you use, Lord Mayor of Yedo?
The thought formed, sharp as a swordblade--sharp as a claw--in Kantaro’s head. For that matter, what amends to his ancestors was Tsunetomo going to make for his failure to kill the Captain of the Goldenwing? He looked about him in the stillness of the unmanned control room. Only Hana sat, inscrutable as an amber carving, atop a navigational holograph generator.

Kantaro studied the small beast intently. Had those thoughts come from her? Surely not. But who could ever be sure with these strange spacefaring cats who flew like wingless birds in zero gravity and communed with the Goldenwing’s vast mainframe computer seemingly at will?

He turned again to look down the empty venue toward the slowly contracting iris. Yamato proper was no longer visible, though its ruddy reflections could be seen repeated over and over again in the shining, golden skylar of the sails now slowly emerging from the masts and yards.

Beyond, Kantaro could make out the full disk of Moon Tokugawa, a gas planetesimal 2,900,000 kilometers from Yamato. Tokugawa would be short-lived, as natural satellites go. He lacked the mass to retain the methane of which he was made. In a mere million of the local years, Moon Tokugawa would be a wizened, dark, and frigid iron core. When that time came, the history-conscious Yamatans would have to rename him.

It would not do to have the most commanding figure out of the Japanese past represented by an iron cinder.

Kantaro again looked at Hana. In spite of his anxieties, he smiled at the cat. “Was that your comment or mine?” he asked aloud.

For answer Hana leaped from the projector into Kantaro’s willing arms. Together they stood by the port, watching the hatch close and snuff out the stars, one by one.

Pronker sat alertly in the special bubble Damon Ng had added to his space armor. From this vantage point he could see the monkeys moving through the lower reaches of the rig, clearing halyards and unfurling sails, setting them to reflect the light of the red sun.

Pronker understood what it was the half-living creatures were doing because his person, the human tom known as Damon, had such an open mind that he had learned to regard it as his own. He surmised that all the scurrying activity of the half-critters in the rig had to do with the wish of the great-queen-who-is-not-alive to move from where she presently was to where she preferred to be.

Mira had taught all the Folk that the desires of the great queen were important and that they were to be fulfilled at once, even at the risk of injury or death.

The idea of injury, let alone death, was alien to Pronker. In his young life there had been scuffles with his littermates, but these small battles were never allowed to escalate into serious catfights. A small scratch or bite customarily received soothing attention from the mother, or, recently, from his own human tom.

Pronker, like all the Folk, had been encouraged by Mira to visit the newly modified Monkey House and to spend time with the dull and timid creatures who lived there. The cats were instructed to reassure the half-alive chimp-machines that they were not in danger any longer.

The “any longer” was because at a place where the sky had been very different, some humans who did not belong on the great queen had come aboard with their ugly auras and killing instruments. For reasons totally incomprehensible to Pronker, they had blundered in amongst the monkeys and killed one, terrifying the others so that they were afraid to leave their lair.

The monkeys were not the work of he-who-cuts and so could not be modified. The cats were commanded by the mother to reassure the foolish creatures that they were once again safe. Visits to the Monkey House had bored Pronker, but they improved after the young tabby bonded with Damon, who could explain (with exasperating tedium and difficulty) what it was the monkeys were required to do. Or rather to resume doing.