Glory's People

by Alfred Coppel

  The daimyos held war fans, each with the mon of his clan. The exception was Minamoto no Kami’s, which bore the sun disk of Amaterasu. Duncan had seen such war fans in the holoprograms Glory produced for him. Long ago on Earth they had been used to transmit orders in battle.

  Amaya whispered, “What are they trying to say with all this, Duncan?”

  Duncan looked about the circle of daimyos. The lords of Domains formed the first seated rank, cross-legged in the tatami matting that had been spread for them. All were dressed in ceremonial armor. Behind each man his retainers stood like statues. The relative affluence of the Domains was reflected in the opulence of the caparisons the Lord and high-ranking retainers wore. The daimyo of Hokkaido, Genji Akagi, though poor, was the Lord with the most exalted lineage, being descended from the rulers of pre-shogunal Japan. Duncan had seen almost nothing of the Genji during this convocation.

  The Lord of Hokkaido was old, even for this company of mostly elderly men. It seemed to Duncan that the mere effort of attending the meeting was exhausting the man. Minamoto Kantaro had, in the most polite tones, remarked that Genji fortunes had declined steadily since Lander’s Day. (All colonists seemed to speak of the day of their landing on a colony planet as though it were yesterday, Duncan thought. On Yamato, Lander’s Day had been more than a thousand years ago.)

  Kantaro’s remark about Genji Akagi had been an understatement. Hokkaido was the least favored domain on Yamato, a desolation of ice and snow in the high northern latitudes. The Genji’s war fan, like many others, rested facedown on the matting--hardly an indication of warlike resolve.

  Duncan looked at the manner in which the other Lords displayed their fans. If the placement of the fans had significance, as Glory's database informed the syndic that it did, the prognosis of this gathering was not encouraging.

  To Amaya, Duncan said in a low voice, “The fans were used to signal orders in the wars on Earth. And to indicate intent.” Anya glanced at the circle of daimyos. Facial expressions were hidden behind lacquered steel masks that exposed only the obsidian black eyes. She looked carefully at the two Lords flanking the Shogun. On his right sat Minamoto Kantaro. His fan bore the device of the city of Yedo. On the Shogun’s left squatted Lord Yoshi Eiji of Kai. Anya glanced quickly at Duncan. The daimyo of Kai’s body language was that of a frightened man.

  “Minamoto-sama means to fight,” Duncan said quietly. “And so does Kantaro. I don’t think the others do.”

  The daimyo’s replicated armor appeared to contain grav devices. The difficulty of producing such apparel, and for merely ceremonial purposes, was enormous. Duncan wondered if these people, isolated for so long, had devoted as much care to the production of new weapons. What would be effective against the Terror? Glory had driven it away by quieting a battle with cold-sleep. But killing it? Duncan feared that might be a very different task. Perhaps it was an impossible one.

  Behind the Shogun stood a double row of archers. The fletching on long arrows showed above the retainers’ armored backs. The bow and arrow was a weapon peculiarly adapted for use in space, Duncan thought sadly. Like all of mankind’s weapons, they had been designed by men millennia ago to kill other men. We have always been good at killing one another, Duncan thought. We have done it in war, in bloody ceremony, or in drunken rages. He remembered the Samhain Festival on his native Thalassa. There, at the time of the summer solstice, the antique claymores and spears carried from Earth were unwrapped and the clansmen drank whiskey and danced the sword dances of their ancestors from dusk until sunrise. And often enough, when the liquor set the blood on fire, men of Thalassa fought and killed one another.

  An uncle of Duncan’s own marriage group had died in a Samhain brawl the year before the old Wired Ones of the Gloria Coelis arrived at Thalassa on Search.

  Minamoto Kantaro got to his feet and advanced, fan held rigidly at his side. He planted himself, legs apart, before Duncan and Amaya and made a formal bow.

  Duncan returned it in kind, and several of the daimyos uttered a grunting bark of approval.

  Kantaro was distressed. Both empaths could feel it. A part of his distress had to do with a recent decision. But there was more. Duncan suddenly received a powerful empathic signal. It was not in words, but the meaning was crystalline, and the thought was aimed at Duncan and at no one else. It came from Mira. It could have come from no other: “He knows that one of his threw death at you. “

  The paper screens cut off much of Duncan’s view of the huge compartment. But Mira was out there, watching and waiting. For a moment Duncan was almost overwhelmed with angry despair. He had hoped that Kantaro could be counted on. He felt the steel-masked Yamatans around him. They had come to see what force a Goldenwing could deploy to protect their world. They had failed utterly to understand the scope of the challenge and what defeat would surely mean. Duncan’s empathic surge was so powerful that it startled Anya Amaya. “Duncan,” she whispered. “What just happened?”

  He shook his head. “Later. ’’ He looked coldly at Kantaro. The young man’s eyes were wide, startled. Was Hana nearby? Duncan wondered. Of course the Folk could be anywhere they chose aboard Glory. If she was nearby, she had passed the information to Mira, who moved instantly to warn him.

  He straightened from his formal bow. Kantaro said, in Anglic, a language Duncan had not even known he commanded, “Do you understand the language of the war fans, Kr-san?”

  The language of the fans, Duncan thought. How elegantly archaic. And how impossible to contest. The time for that was over.

  It had come and gone before the Starmen, all of Caucasian-Terrestrial descent, could act.

  And if we should act, what would it accomplish? Duncan wondered bitterly. The “language of the fans” was the language of imperatives, of commands. The fans were a signal to act, not an invitation to discuss. What simple creatures we syndics are, he thought. Life seems so straightforward to us. We consider and we convince ourselves of what must be done. But we are too isolated from ordinary men. We forget human self-interest, human ability to be wrong. So we carry our simplicities with us, no matter how many parsecs we travel.

  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?

  18. Cats

  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 wi
th 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.