Glory's People (24 page)

The cold air of the compartment was rank with the smell of angry, desperate men. Still Wired, Amaya reacted to the Yamatans’ battle-pheromones as Mira might have done, with a mix of her own anger and the sort of desperate sexuality mammals feel when faced with danger of death.

She pulled the drogue from her socket, and the raw emotions subsided but did not dissipate completely. She moved easily in the near-null gravity, positioning herself squarely in the open valve.

“Honorable guests,” she said more calmly than she felt. “Accept the Goldenwing
Gloria Coelis
syndics’ apology for your having been temporarily inconvenienced here in the guest area.” Would Duncan be pleased with her slippery manner? Anya wondered. For all the years she had been aboard
Gloria Coelis
she had tried to avoid being the diplomat. But this duty was not avoidable. The Yamatans were seething with outrage. And with fear, she told herself. Even un-Wired, she could smell and taste it. If she had had any doubt that the Terror had been close to the Red Sprite, the rank battle-smell of the Yamatans would convince anyone who had ever encountered the dark Intruder.

The first rank of space-armored daimyo shoved forward. The artificial gravity of their suits gave their movements a brutish, mechanical quality. Did they fight their wars in the same way? If so, this sortie against the killer was doomed.

“Again, honorable sirs,” she said. “You have our apologies. But there was no chance to prepare you for the encounter we have unexpectedly just been through. Our enemy has appeared without warning. We have overflown it and are leaving it behind. For the time being, all is well.”

She wished she were as certain of that last statement as she sounded. She longed to re-Wire and stay in intimate touch with the swiftly changing situation.

Duncan had foreseen her dilemma. The sound systems in the vast compartment came to life. “Minamoto no Kami, this is Kr-san speaking to you. We have only moments ago had a close encounter with the thing we call the Terror. We believe it is temporarily immobilized and we are using this opportunity to open some space between us. Understand that it may not be possible. In the past, the concept of ‘space’ has not been meaningful as regards the Terror. But we shall see. We are leaving orbit as I speak. If we are pursued, I will notify you so that you can board your ships and act as you see fit. If we are not taken immediately under attack, I will meet with you and your daimyos on the bridge in one hour of standard time.

“Obey Sailing Master Amaya-san. She is an experienced and competent officer.”

Anya took advantage of the cessation of Duncan’s voice to select Minamoto Kantaro from the crowd of daimyos. ‘Take me to the Shogun, Kantaro-sama,” she said, ignoring the jostling daimyos.

Kantaro opened his face mask. His cheeks were shiny with sweat. Amaya felt a twinge of sympathy for the Yamatan. She well knew what the first encounter with the dark Outsider did to one’s emotions and confidence. The Terror sucked life and warmth and courage out of one’s very soul. She had been through it. She knew the vast, destroying
fear
that the Terror imposed on inhabitants of normal space.

“Anya-san,” Kantaro said. “I saw Baka Ie and his crew die. Or I think I did. It was as though the life was sucked from their souls. Am I going insane?”

Amaya shook her head. “No, Kantaro-san.”

Kantaro’s eyes were black, shining, featureless--the eyes of a terrified man. “But Baka wasn’t afraid,” he protested. “He was filled with joy. Your people said it is fear and anger that calls it. How could Baka’s people die like that?”

Anya felt a sagging despair. “We have a great deal to learn about--it--whatever it is. We can’t even decide how we should speak of it.” She heard her voice go slightly shrill and she brought herself hard under control. “Daimyo,” she said formally. “Take me to your uncle.”

Kantaro, too, took refuge in formality. He bowed slightly and turned to lead the way.

The Shogun was armored for space like the others, but his helmet stood on a camp stool beside him. Kantaro’s cat companion, Hana, lay alertly in his arms. Minamoto’s delicate fingers caressed the cat’s ears.

“I have been expecting one of you, Anya-san,” he said. “My people insisted that we arm and make ready to be expelled into space.” He made a grimace. “A trifle melodramatic, given the circumstances, but we are a race of Noh actors.”

Anya was amazed to discover that she could discern no fear in the man, nothing to match the discordant suppression of human terror she felt all around her. Hana regarded her calmly out of eyes the color of turquoises.

“Remarkable, isn’t she?” Minamoto no Kami said. “While we were all in a near panic arming for space and thinking we were betrayed, she remained as you see her.” He regarded Anya steadily. “I must have one of her siblings, Anya-san. There is much they can teach us. As I am certain you know.”

Anya Amaya wondered,
Shall I say that I, of all the syndics, remain unchosen?

Minamoto no Kami said, “Tell me what has just happened. Something cold and black swept through the heart of this ship like an executioner’s sword. Kantaro swears he saw Baka Ie and his people die. Saw it or dreamed it.” He cupped Hana’s small chin and looked into her eyes. “Perhaps it was she who saw Baka and shared the vision with Kantaro. There are legends about far-seeing beasts in our history. But Baka is dead, is that not so?”

“It is so, Shogun,” Anya said. “Our bridge recorders made tapes of what could be seen. You will be shown.”

“Why were we confined?”

“It was the Goldenwing’s decision, Shogun. There was no time to do anything else.”

“Do you know what we experienced while we were arming?” The old man seemed suddenly angry.

“I can almost imagine,” Anya said.

“The worst thing in the world,” Minamoto said.

“Shogun?”

“For each man. His worst imagining. For some death by swordcut. For others by drowning. Asphyxiation. By fire. For me it was a stroke. I was paralyzed, dying very slowly, unable to move, to speak, to feel. Only to die moment by eternal moment.” The dark eyes raged. “It all took place in an instant. Or a lifetime. Now that it is past, who can say? But we have each been shown the worst thing, the very worst. Did that happen to you?”

Anya felt a deep pang of guilt. “We were Wired, Shogun. The ship protected us. But we have had the experience you describe. In the Ross Stars. We each had our private death.”

The old man’s expression softened. “Forgive me, Anya-san. We were angry and frightened. I should have realized that the syndics have been through all this before. We doubted you. Even when we were told of our lost ship out in Honda space we imagined nothing like this. Now we have looked, with you, into the black pit of hell. We understand.”

Anya Amaya guided the Yamatans through the plena back to the hangar deck. It was there, Duncan told her by drogue, that he wanted most of them to stay now, aboard their ships.

“Where is it?”
Amaya asked.

“Eight thousand klicks back. At Loss of Signal the Sprite was beginning to fade, “
Duncan said through her radio-link.

“Is that significant?”

“It may be. But distance won’t save us from another encounter. I am convinced it doesn’t conform to Einsteinian limits. “

“How is that possible? “

“I wish I knew, “
Duncan said.
“When you have the Yamatans aboard their ships, bring Minamoto no Kami and Kantaro to me. “

“Aye, Captain. “

At the valve to the hangar deck, Kantaro asked, “To whom do you speak?”

“To Duncan-san,” Anya said. “He wants your people to go aboard their ships and wait.”

“Wait? For what? Isn’t the enemy just outside?” His unwilling fear made his voice tight.

“The enemy is behind us. We have lost his signal.”

“But he is faster than we.”

“Far faster, Daimyo,” Amaya said.

Kantaro seemed about to make some protest, but Minamoto no Kami ordered him to silence.

“We have chosen to follow Duncan-sama,” the Shogun said. “We will do it without complaints.”

He spoke to Kantaro, but his words were meant for the daimyos gathered about him in the plenum, Yoshi Eiji of Kai among them. Amaya estimated that he was the most senior of the daimyos who had been commanded by the Shogun to remain behind when the others retreated to Planet Yamato.

The Lord of Kai was not pleased about it. Anya caught strong empathic signals of apprehension and displeasure from him. Anya wondered what he intended to do about it. To her sorrow, however, she was empathic and not clairvoyant.

The crowd of clansmen and samurai pressed around her. As they did she caught another empathic signal. This one from a person unknown, but very nearby. It was a dark sending, filled with a kind of black arrogance. She searched the faces of the Yamatans. But her Centauri background did not serve her well. New Earth was a world without ethnic Mongoloid people. There were ethnic characteristics behind which a trained mind could hide from a Caucasian, core beliefs that shut out Anya’s probings. The ninja was in this crowd of jostling, angry warriors. There was no doubt of it. Did Kantaro know? Did Minamoto no Kami? There was no way of knowing.

If I had a cat partner
, Anya Amaya thought bitterly,
I would not now fail in my duty to my ship and my Master and Commander.

She opened the valve to the hangar deck and stepped aside. To Minamoto no Kami she said, more brusquely than she intended, “Instruct your people to get aboard their ships and be ready for new orders. Then you and Kantaro-sama must return with me to the bridge. Be quick. There is very little time, Shogun.”

Minamoto Kantaro found himself responding peculiarly to the firm orders he was receiving from the Sailing Master. His first response was compliance--such was the strength of Anya-san’s character. He had found himself reacting to the power of the out-worlder’s personality as long ago as their flight with Kr-san to the Shogun’s garden, when the threat they faced was theoretical and seemed subject to a considered, dispassionate solution. Even then, it was not the Yamatan way to permit women to command. True, on occasion, Minamoto no Kami had shown signs of a willingness to countenance change in the age-old Japanese tradition of female subservience. But, Kantaro thought, any true recasting of the social order of Planet Yamato was a fantasy.

Still, on Anya-san’s own ground matters were different. She willingly subordinated herself to Kr-san, but that was because of his rank rather than the biological fact of his being male. As Kantaro trailed Anya and his uncle, the Shogun, he felt out of his depth, as though he were losing contact with the verities he had known since childhood.

Worse still was the secret guilt he felt at having been involved, before the syndics appeared in the Tau Ceti System, in the business of hiring ninjas as a defense against the changes the Starmen would surely bring to Planet Yamato.

In a matter of a day and some few hours things had changed. Kantaro’s fear was no longer of changes, but of the killer he had been instrumental in bringing aboard the Goldenwing. I must do something, he thought. But what? A ninja was adept at subtle violence as well as a master of disguise. To unmask Tsunetomo was beyond the capabilities of an ordinary man. So what then? Rely on the Starmen to apprehend a Master of Ninjas? Minamoto Kantaro’s very genes seemed to cry out against such a betrayal of his essential Yamatan nature.

I thank the Goddess,
he thought
, that the attacks on Kr-san’s life have failed. But what now? Where will we be if the next attempt succeeds?

Kantaro was discovering that even for a Yamatan aristocrat absolution for attempted murder was not easily come by. One simply did not extricate oneself easily from treachery on so grand a scale. The ninja had not disappeared, nor, Kantaro suspected, had he meekly retreated back to Planet Yamato with the daimyos the Shogun had dismissed. The Mayor of Yedo remembered the encounter in the grove in the Shogun’s garden.
Men like Tsunetomo vanish like smoke
, he thought,
but never before their task is done
.

What would Amaya-san think if she knew? More to the point, what would she recommend that the Master of this great vessel do? Opening the hangar deck and ejecting the colonists into space naked as newborns was not an outlandish notion to a man born and raised on Yamato.

He felt a soft touch on his shoulder. It was Hana. She had materialized from somewhere, gripping the padding of his armor with imperceptible gentleness. She thrust her temple against his ear and trilled softly.

Without his volition, his spirits rose, and as they did so Anya Amaya turned to glance at him. Sometimes between the syndics and ordinary men flashed some extraordinarily powerful connections. He had had the strong and urgent feeling that Anya-san responded to him as a man. She still did. But suddenly he felt a spike of envy from her.

For a moment that confused him, and then he realized that she envied him Hana. For a second moment he experienced an almost childish satisfaction that this woman who so attracted him sexually while simultaneously intimidating him could wish for anything that he possessed.

He was admonished for that thought with an almost inaudible growl from the small cat on his shoulder. The statement was not in human words, but its meaning was unmistakable:
“I am not owned. I am not possessed. I am Hana. “

Thinking to avoid shocking the Yamatans with the sight of near naked syndics in pods, Wired to the ship, Duncan had considered conducting his war council with the Shogun and his people on the skydeck under the carapace. But he decided against that because it had become necessary (as it was inevitable that -it should be) that the Yamatans see the people with whom they had decided to cast their lots as they were.

Until now there had been neither necessity nor opportunity to allow the colonists the sight of Goldenwing
Gloria Coelis’s
bridge-crew at their proper stations. Duncan knew from experience that it could be a daunting sight. As a boy recruit, he had been stunned by the sight of the near immortal Starmen naked in the gel of their pods, their heads sprouting the grotesque segmented cable of the drogue that connected them to their vessel.