by Greg Bear
“I’d like to know what.” She returned to the screen. “Christ, what did they have around that star? I see hyperfine structures I’ve never heard of…”
“I do not know,” Kawashita said, standing by the window, barely three meters from the thin, cold air of the tropopause. “Something.” There was a catch in his voice. Anna swung her chair around and noticed the glitter of a tear running down his cheek. For the first time she saw Kawashita crying. She climbed out of the nook. She had never hugged him before, but she did so now without hesitation.
“I am ashamed,” Kawashita said between hard sobs.
“What is it?” she asked, holding him to her.
“Where my grandparents once lived. It is covered with five kilometers of concrete and steel.”
Anna wondered whether the crack-up was beginning. Half a dozen expert psychiatrists had counseled her to expect it. “Hell, Yoshio, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t live on Earth for a week longer than I had to. Maybe that’s what you’re talking about.”
“This isn’t my land anymore,” he said. “Not where I can search. But if what you say is true, most people are happy.” He wiped his face quickly with a sleeve.
“One way or another. Happy may not be the exact word.”
“So they are not like me, not like the people I knew. And I have to find answers in relation to myself. This is not the world.”
“Then you’ll have to find another.”
“I learn day and night, and still I am ignorant. I don’t have the appropriate mental conditioning for this. No matter how hard I struggle, it doesn’t come naturally.”
Anna squeezed him harder, as if to hold him together. “We’ve all known it would be difficult,” she said. “Maybe we didn’t really know how difficult. Perhaps we shouldn’t have come back.”
“Then how would I have known?” Kawashita asked. “Besides,” and he backed away from her, straightening, “there are still things I must do and see.”
The apartment voice announced, “Mr. Joseph Nakamura is at the door.”
“Let him enter,” Kawashita said, wiping his eyes quickly.
Nakamura, appointed by Independent Consolidations to chaperon them around Earth, came in wearing a smile and very little else. He was blond, with the vaguest hint of a surgically induced epicanthic fold. “Fine day out, I see,” he said, walking past the window but not looking down. His eyes swept the apartment with nervous interest.
“Minus sixty degrees up here,” Kawashita said.
“Sunny and fair in the tropopause. I have our schedule for today. We’re due at the Kyushu visitor’s center in an hour. I hear Yoshio is going to be offered a permanent residence there, on the spot of his choice. Then—”
“I’m not up for exhibition.” Kawashita said. He looked imploringly at Anna. “You’re my tutor, my guide. Help me out of this. I don’t want to be a museum piece.”
“Then,” Nakamura continued, hardly skipping a beat, “we’ve set up a submarine tour of the Marianas trench, including a visit to the old Kraken Works. The Japanese still eat squid, you know—and the bigger they are, the more economical. After that—”
“We won’t be getting that far, Mr. Nakamura, so don’t bother with the rest. Yoshio doesn’t appreciate the attention he’s been getting, and I understand why. From here in, you can help us by serving one function only—keep our whereabouts secret.”
Nakamura kept smiling. “That’d be no function at all, Anna. I’m assigned to—”
“Then your assignment is over. I can put my own people to work, and nobody will know where we are. Infact, I like that idea better. Yoshio, we’re leaving the central city in a few hours—want to pack your souvenirs?”
“After my own heart,” Kawashita said, heading for the next room.
“What will it be, a honeymoon?” Nakamura said jovially.
“We’re not married, and we don’t cohabit,” Nestor said. “We’re friends.”
“Come on, Anna. You’re known far and wide as a connoisseur of—”
“Anytime I let you finish a sentence, Mr. Nakamura, interrupt yourself for me. Voice, Mr. Nakamura would like to inspect the hallway.”
“Sir,” the apartment said pleasantly, “the features of central city’s many corridors are famous around the Galaxy. First to be noted is the unique shifting design of the carpets, changed every hour, featuring the art of the Earth’s finest—”
“Your wish,” Nakamura said. “Pleasure to serve you this far. To be candid”—and his face became candid—“I think you’re better off that way. More relaxing. Anytime, however, you wish to—”
“Voice!”
“—craftsmen. This way, Mr. Nakamura.”
Anna sighed and returned to the screen. The apartment voice cleared a mechanical throat. “Mr. Nakamura is on his way, madam. I’m afraid there’s another interruption, an insistent one.”
“Who?”
“Time-and-motion planner aboard the Peloros wishes to speak to you.”
“Jason DiNova. Put him onto the visit circuits.”
“Any time limit before technical difficulties should interrupt?”
“No. Jason’s one of us, usually. Thanks for your concern.”
“Gracious madam. Here is Mr. DiNova.”
A man appeared in the center of the room looking tired and upset. DiNova was just over a meter and a half in height, stocky but trim, with fierce eyes, a short chin, and a scalp half bald, half covered with wiry white hair. “Anna. You’re not clear yet.’ His delivery was rapid and husky.
“Gives me an advantage, Jason. Wait a second and it’ll all come through.”
“Ah. Okay.” His eyes focused on her, and he looked around the room. “Fancy. But we’ve got important things to talk about. I gave you one month for Kawashita—is he here?”
“Packing.”
“And you’ve gone over by two more months. You’ve lost two billion in revenues because of that and put two acquirable planets on USC’s list. You’ve got to tell me what’s coming up. I understand taking the USC guy under your wing on Kawashita’s planet, but isn’t this going a bit far?”
“Probably. Kawashita is a friend now, Jason. You know I give friends more time than I should.”
“I’ve got a schedule for the next six weeks, and I’d like you to examine it before it goes into ship’s planning.”
“Transmit it and I’ll look it over.”
“Are you going to start a scene with this guy?”
Nestor’s face hardened. “Don’t push it.”
“You ordered me to push it whenever necessary. I think it’s necessary. Does he go with us, become part of recreation hours like the rest of the entourage, or do we—” He stopped. “Hell, I don’t even want to suggest an alternative. You might take me up on it.”
“Kawashita is an honored guest of the Peloros. He’ll stay with us.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m interested in what’s going to happen to him, and because I like him.”
“Yes, and so do I, but if I let my interests get in the way of my work, you’d have every right to restaff my billet.”
“I’m glad you can’t reciprocate. I have plans for Yoshio, don’t worry.”
“He holds a single planet, and not a very important one, as it turns out. I’ve had to turn down meetings with five Independent Consolidations reps—and at my guess, that means we’ve passed up business with a hundred planets. Anna, is this called love, or some new kind of insanity?”
Nestor turned away from DiNova’s image and climbed into the screen nook. “Jason, you’re getting personal.”
The man held up his hands. “All in the line of duty. Remember. Don’t restaff until I start insulting you during rec time.”
“I’ll okay ship’s planning as soon as I get it. And I’ll send check-ins with my positi
on every few hours. Hire a security team, or send one down from the ship—make them discreet. We’ll probably be back by week’s end, and unless you’ve got plans to put Peloros on starshine duty—”
“Nothing at the moment, but I may have to hire her out as a dance hall to pay the orbit rental.”
“—unless that happens, I don’t think I’ll be needed for a week.”
“How’s he doing?” DiNova asked.
“He’s got courage. He’s walking on the edge of the cliff, but he’s already overcome more than the psychs said was possible. Riding out culture shock, coming to terms with himself—and all the time questioning his deepest values. Think you could do that, Jason?”
“I wouldn’t want to try.”
“Nor I. So let me run this through its course. We won’t lose anything we really need.”
“What are you going to do about the Ring Stars?”
Anna pointed to the screen. “I’m keeping my eye on them. Looks like the supernova has dusted the whole area with superheavy elements. We might stake a few claims.”
“No word from the Aighors, and no word on whether the disrupters are still operating.”
“Keep me informed. I’m not beyond the pale, Jason. I’m still interested and aware.”
“Glad to hear it. Follow your wyrd, Anna, but keep my heart and arteries in mind, all right?”
“I’ll try, Jason.”
“Thank you.” He looked very worn, and Nestor felt a twinge of guilt. Her slightest whims could take years off a good man’s working life.
“Jason, you have my love and respect. If anything goes critical, pull me up no matter what I say. And Yoshio too, of course.”
“I’ll do my damnedest. Out.”
“Out.”
A faint haze hung in the air where DiNova’s image had been. The voice spoke up. “Where may I send your commodities, madam?”
“Kodiak, Alaska, and book us right behind them. Voice, you’ve done well by us so far. Can you get us an agent who’ll be discreet and too set in his ways to care about world news?”
“I’ve anticipated madam. One is waiting your instructions at this moment.”
“Good. Voice, have one of your programs charged to the ASNWS Peloros. You’re a first-class design.”
“My children thank you.”
Twenty
“I laid a false trail,” Anna said. “We have two days left on Earth before the Peloros can take advantage of a conjunction. Where do you want to go?”
“I heard Nakamura say we had an appointment in Kyushu.”
“It’s been canceled.”
“Then let’s keep it.”
Anna smiled. “I know why you’re doing so well. You’ve got a devious mind.”
He shook his head. “I have two places to visit there. I have read of a man I would like to meet, and a museum I would like to visit.”
The surface effect ship, rented just hours before, made its leisurely hundred-knot passage with almost no sound but the whoosh of spray and music coming through speakers in the bulkhead. They sat on an upper deck, letting the sun shine on them between the shadows of high, woolen clouds, watching the blue-gray-sea and the distant haze of the Japanese coast. Just an hour before, they had passed a maritime city farm, like a giant snowflake laid gently on the sea, surrounded by thousands of submarine pens marked with brilliant orange buoys.
Now the air was cooling, and it looked like a storm was coming. Nestor handed Kawashita a pair of polarized glasses and told him to look through them. He peered up and saw a distant curtain of shimmering light marching across the sea ahead.
“Weather controls,” she explained. “We’re entering a planned low-pressure disturbance. I’ll tell the pilot where to take us, so he can chart his course and skirt the weather.
When she returned, he said, “This ship is old. Can it stand the strain?”
“Easily. They’ll sling a tarp across the upper decks, warn us we’ll get wet, then go below. About the worse that can happen is we’ll blow a little off course. Do you want to stay up here or go below?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t felt a big blow in fifteen years. I’d like to stay.”
“Then I will stay.”
“Why?” Nestor asked.
Kawashita patted her hand. “In case you go overboard, I will throw a life ring.”
“I mean it,” she said, her face straight and serious. “We’ve been around each other for a long time now. Everything has gone smoothly, we always stick together, we never complain. We joke and laugh and sympathize. Why do you want to stay around me?”
“Not because you remind me of. Mother, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kawashita said. “I could find someone else to guide me. But I’m curious about you.”
“Why, because I’m famous?”
He shook his head.
“Rich and powerful?”
“Oh?” He smiled. “I didn’t know that.”
“I said I’m serious. Why?”
Kawashita looked uncomfortable. He took off the glasses and folded them, then swiveled back and forth in his seat, tapping the railing with one foot. “I haven’t used any of the devices in the laboratories,” he said. “And I haven’t accepted any requests for shared quarters.”
“So?”
“I think things would go badly between myself and someone from the future—my future. I’d seem childish, a savage. Japanese men are not by nature discreet. But I’m not really from the past now, am I? I’ve been too many people, lived too long.”
Kawashita stopped swiveling his chair. “I’m curious about you because you’re so hard, but you worry what happens to others. You behave like a man—”
Anna cleared her throat.
“—tough and capable, but when you cause pain, you hurt yourself. You cannot be very happy.”
“I don’t know about that. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you never know why a man loves you. Or if he loves you at all. You must look very hard, search carefully. Have you found anyone yet?”
“No,” Nestor said. “Sometimes I think I have, but then…nothing. I have to break it off.”
“I am afraid to mix, and you are afraid to trust.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I haven’t been to bed—is that an obsolete phrase?—I haven’t conjoined with a woman in over three years—with a real woman in more than four centuries. For a while I thought it didn’t matter anymore. But around you it does matter.”
Nestor winced as a drop of rain hit her face. The crew unrolled tarps and plastic roofing behind them. The first rush of cool wind made the ship’s stabilizers complain. “Usually, when I’m curious, I explore. But I’ve been shy for some reason. Perhaps I think you’re too delicate.”
Kawashita laughed. “I’ve survived battles at sea, air crashes, sinking ships, the rise and fall of dynasties, the viciousness of an ambitious daughter and a shogun, not to mention four hundred years. Delicate? I don’t see that.”
“Then I shouldn’t be afraid of you.”
“Hell, no!” Kawashita almost roared. “I am still young, and there are better things to do than get blown around and soaked. Madam, you who are so much younger and more delicate than I, will you accompany me below? We have much to catch up on.”
Nestor shook his hand. “I’ve heard that Japanese men were—”
“A base and slanderous rumor,” Kawashita interrupted.
“Now you don’t even know what I was going to say!”
The ship lurched as it hit the squall line, and the sudden scream of wind drowned out their laughter as they wobbled down the steps to their cabin.
Kawashita was neither as strong nor as exotic as some she had had, but there was a hint of his years in his love-making, a perfection of n
uances which she found disarming. She relaxed with him, something she couldn’t remember ever doing before. Her back and neck became almost fluid, and her jaw muscles felt so good she was afraid to talk. They held each other for an hour after, then lay apart on the old-fashioned fluid-filled bed, talking. Kawashita told her about his parents and grandparents, his brothers and sisters and cousins and what they had done in old Japan.
“I don’t talk about my family much,” Nestor said. “I’m not ashamed of them, or anything, but it just doesn’t occur to me. After what you’ve gone through—battles between Taira and Minamoto, and all that—we’d probably be pretty humdrum.”
“I’d like to hear,” he said.
“With you, I don’t mind,” she said. “But you may have to prod me. I’m not used to confessions.”
“I’ll prod.”
She looked up at the ceiling and tapped her fingers on his arm. “My grandfather pioneered fifty planets and sold their contracts to United Stars. Then he pioneered sixty more and sold their contracts to Hafkan Bestmerit. Hafkan Bestmerit wasn’t quite the same then as it is now, because it allowed a small group of humans on its ‘board,’ or what served the same function. Otherwise, even then it was a consortium of alien species. It took some bloody-minded bastards to stay sane among the Crocerians and Aighors and Danvelters—and they didn’t stick it out long anyway. They splintered and formed Dallat Enterprises—and that may explain why Dallat’s been so long achieving respect and decorum.
“But my grandfather—Traicom Nestor—stayed away from most of the politics until he was older. He married when he was fifty, after a long free-lance career. Some people thought my grandmother, Joyaness, was a novabaiter—in old terms, an incorrigible bitch. But that was still a time when strong women were looked on as perverse, something against nature.
“I knew her better. Joyaness took over Traicom’s disorganized finances and suggested he offer himself to high office in an economische—which is another word, now obsolete, for consolidation. At the time, United Stars was strongly socialist and wouldn’t have anything to do with entrepreneurs like Traicom, except to buy worlds from him. So Joyaness took a look at new-formed Dallat, saw great possibilities, and suggested he go with them. Dallat was more to his style.
