Besides, did this mean he was back in the Hegemony Guard for good?
“It has been decided,” Omigato said, again in Nihongo. “The experience will do you good.”
“Hai, Omigatosama,” Dev said, bowing. “Domo arigato gozaimashte.” There was nothing else to be said.
Chapter 8
The Emperor shall be the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.
—The Constitution of Japan,
Article I
C.E. 1946
Yoshi Omigato sat cross-legged on emptiness, unsupported, unprotected against the vacuum of space. Beneath him, filling the AI-generated universe of this, his private ViRsim, the splendor of the Galaxy stretched across one hundred thousand light-years, the nucleus a red-gold furnace, the spiral arms an entwining mist of blue-white gossamer streaked and smeared by vast rivers of dust and gas. Omigato’s physical body floated weightless within his quarters aboard the Tokitukaze, but here his spirit moved unfettered across the galactic sea. It was sobering to realize that at this scale, from this simulated distance, the entire one-hundred-light-year reach of the Shichiju was invisible, a microscopic clumping of dust motes lost among so much glory.
“My Lord…”
The voice was that of his analogue and was identical to his own. “Speak.”
“The marine has returned from Eridu. He wishes to make his report.”
Briefly, Omigato considered having his analogue handle the debriefing. That, after all, was a primary function of such computer-generated alter egos, to serve as buffers against the outside universe.
Not everyone could afford full-range analogues, computer programs that could flawlessly duplicate the thinking of their human counterparts, but those who could often used them as personal secretaries and chiefs-of-staff. They could double for their owners over a ViRcom link, where it was impossible to tell whether you were talking to a software construct or the person behind it.
He rarely used it that way, however. Yoshi Omigato was a traditionalist who believed that personal contact—and personal supervision—were necessities for anyone who wished to exercise true leadership.
“I will see him here.”
Gunso Isamu Kimaya’s persona materialized before Omigato. The black of his uniform so perfectly matched the velvet black of space that his head and hands and the white and blood-scarlet flash of the 3rd Imperial Marines on his shoulder appeared disembodied, pale shapes against the night. In this, Omigato’s virtual reality, Kimaya was a tiny figure, a toy before the looming, planetary bulk of the brooding Imperial daihyo.
“Ohayo gozaimashte, Omigatosama,” the figure said, bowing. “So sorry, I am unworthy. Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. I rejoice that you survived your mission.”
Kimaya made a dismissive gesture. “My survival was unimportant, my Lord. However, the disciplines of kokorodo served me well. By the time the warstriders returned fire, I was out of the room, shielded from the blast by a sturdy interior fire wall. I would have remained, of course, had that been your will.”
“Of course. But it was important that your body not be found in the wreckage.” He did not add that others in his employ had been within the building at the same time, waiting to remove or destroy Kimaya’s corpse if his escape had not gone as planned. “Your report.”
“Of course, my Lord. As you predicted, the demonstration became a riot when the Hegemony officer died. The Guard forces were nearly overwhelmed. Also, as you predicted, the warstriders managed to restore order and disperse the mob. I’m sure my Lord has already seen the casualty figures and damage reports.” At Omigato’s nod, the marine pressed ahead. “The atmosphere within the city is now one of intense frustration and deep-seated anger. The casualty reports are being deliberately inflated to feed that anger. In the three days since the Winchester demonstration, dozens of minor incidents have occurred. Yesterday, an off-duty Guardsman was assaulted and killed by a local patriot with a knife. There is open talk in the streets of revolt against the Hegemony.”
“Very good.” Omigato said. “You have done well, Isamusan.”
The marine visibly preened under Omigato’s praise. “Arigato, Omigatosama.” He bowed deeply. “Domo arigato gozaimashte. What are your orders?”
“For now, you will wait and watch. Be certain that you and your men are not involved with events on the planet. No Imperial must be connected with these events. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly, my Lord.”
“Within a week, two at the most, the balance of your unit will be transferred to Eridu’s surface. At that time, you will take your place again with your war-brothers.”
“I live only to do your will, my Lord, and the Emperor’s.”
“The two, Gunso, are one and the same. You are dismissed.”
Kimaya’s image winked out, and Omigato was alone again in the emptiness of intergalactic space.
Gaman, he thought. Patience. That was the key to everything.
A very ancient folk tale contrasted the three great heroes of sixteenth-century Japan by picturing them sitting together, waiting to hear the first cuckoo’s song in the spring. Nobunaga, who attempted to unite the fragmented provinces of the Empire by force, who at sixteen years of age had proven himself to be a man of inflexible will and purpose, was supposed to have expressed his mind by the haiku:
The cuckoo—
If it does not sing
I’ll put an end to it.
Hideyoshi, the peasant’s son who succeeded Nobunaga, who in ten whirlwind years extended his power over all of Japan, organized the country’s central government, and attempted the conquest of Korea and China, Hideyoshi, known as the Taiko, or “Great Lord,” was supposed to have said:
The cuckoo—
If it does not sing
I’ll show it how.
And finally, there was Tokugawa Iyeyasu, victor of Sekigahara, the shogun who ultimately and completely united the nation’s warring factions and warlords under one rule, who established the Tokugawa Shogunate that eclipsed even the power of the divine Emperor for 265 years. Iyeyasu’s approach was characterized by the haiku:
The cuckoo—
If it does not sing
I’ll wait until it does.
Yoshi Omigato had always thought of himself as Iyeyasu reborn. He did not believe in literal reincarnation, of course, for privately he was both agnostic and realist, but he nurtured within himself the spirit of the crafty shogun whose patience and understanding of men had won an empire and founded a dynasty.
And perhaps he bore with him some measure of Iyeyasu’s karma as well. The shogun had confirmed in his rule the greatness of Japan, founded in the excellence of Bushido, the Warrior’s Code. In Omigato, that greatness would blossom again, in time to reverse the Empire’s decline.
There was within the Tenno Kyuden, even within the Imperial Staff itself, a powerful group of officers and aristocrats who called themselves Kansei no Otoko, “the Men of Completion.” The Kansei Faction feared and detested the blurring of the traditional boundaries that separated the historic purity of the Nihonjin from the gaijin, the outsiders who had followed Dai Nihon to greatness, and the stars. Nowhere was that blurring more apparent than in the humiliation of the Emperor.
Once, the Emperor had been divine, the Son of Heaven, the most perfect of men. After the national disgrace of 1945, he had been demoted to the ranks of ordinary men, the country’s leader, nothing more. Within the terms of the foreign-dictated constitution, he’d been relegated to little more than a figurehead, “a symbol of the state and of the unity of the people.” His power, the glory that had defined Japan and its people, had been stripped from him.
In nearly six hundred years, that nakedness of spirit and character had never been corrected. The Japanese constitution had been revised several times in those centuries to keep pace with the changes and shifting balances of power on Earth and acr
oss Earth’s domain among the stars, but still the Emperor remained a man like any other.
Omigato’s facial expression betrayed no emotion, but the very thought was like the steady drip of some implacable acid within his heart, searing and destructive. Tenno-heika, the Son of Heaven, the divine Lord of the Stars, actually stooped to presiding at conferences, awards ceremonies, and ViRnews interviews with an earthy familiarity that appalled Omigato and the others of the Kansei Faction. He had ordered that gaijin like that fool Prem, like Cameron, and like Cameron’s accursed father be appointed to high positions within Imperial service that traditionally had been held by Japanese alone. He had actually encouraged foreigners to approach him, to think of him as a mortal, and by so doing he had lessened the power that the very idea of Dai Nihon and the Tenno held over the hearts and minds of men.
Omigato was dedicated to changing all of that, and to erasing this last trace of the Empire’s ancient disgrace.
The irony gave Omigato a small, grim pleasure; that he, an agnostic, should be dedicated to restoring the cult of the divine Emperor! He saw no hypocrisy there, however. If he did not believe in the gods, he believed implicitly in the divine purity, worthiness, and destiny of Yamato, the spiritual heart of ancient Japan. The Emperor’s disgrace must be cleansed, and to do that he would use men like Kimaya and Prem, and even foreigners like Devis Cameron, when they could be molded like potter’s clay into the workings of his plan.
Besides, though the fact was not well known, Omigato himself hailed from the Imperial line. The current Emperor was his cousin, as well as a childhood friend and confidant. It was not unthinkable that Omigato himself might one day aspire to the Sun Throne, if such was indeed his karma.…
In the meantime, Yoshi Omigato, like Tokugawa Iyeyasu, was willing to wait with an almost superhuman patience as his masterful spinnings rewove the tapestry of history.
Chapter 9
The less government we have the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual.…
—Politics
Ralph Waldo Emerson
C.E. 1844
The straight-line distance from 26 Draconis to Chi Draconis is 36.11 light-years, and even with no stops along the way the voyage took over a month. Katya and the other former Thorhammers, Sinclair, and his staff had all taken passage as civilians, traveling under false IDs imprinted on their cephlink RAMs provided by the New Constitutionalist underground on New America. Their ship was a freighter, though the passenger accommodations were comfortable enough. Despite her name, the Saiko Maru, her captain and crew were all members of the New Constitutionalist Network.
Or the Confederation, as Sinclair had begun calling it. A committee of rebel leaders on New America, he told them, had appointed him to lead the drafting of a document—one very like the Declaration of Independence that had presented American sovereignty to an astonished world 766 years earlier. He had needed a name, something less cumbersome than the New Constitutionalists and less obvious than the Rebellion, that would describe the framework of virtual nongovernment that was holding the movement together.
“There was once,” Sinclair explained to them in the Saiko Maru’s passenger lounge, one shipboard evening while they were still in K-T space, “a political party in the old United States of America called the Libertarians. Their fundamental philosophies could be summed up, more or less, in two statements: the less government, the better; and what is immoral for the individual or an organization ought to be immoral for the state.”
“Sounds like your New Constitutionalists. General,” Bondevik said.
“A lot of the NC platform was patterned on the Libertarians, Torolf. Coincidentally rather than deliberately, I should add, since not too many people today have heard of them. But if seven centuries of progressively larger and more powerful governments have taught us anything at all, it’s that the bigger the government, the greater the chance for the abuse of power. People are not free when the state taxes their productivity for programs that they don’t have a say in. People aren’t free when the state that rules them is too big to respond to their needs, or when there’s no way to keep the state out of private life.”
Katya had thought about her conversation with Dev at Kodama’s party, and shivered. Nothing had happened, no one had been listening, but the Hegemony’s DHS could easily have picked her up for questioning that night if they’d happened to overhear her. Modern technology, with AIs that could listen in on whispers at thirty meters, optical scanners the size of fingernails, and Virtual Reality communications monitored and enhanced by computer together all created an opportunity for eavesdropping and supervisory government unequaled in any other period of history.
“So what happened to the Libertarians, General?” Anders wanted to know.
“Something else they espoused was the need for people to be responsible for their own actions. Sounds good in principle, but in fact, life is simpler when you can download the fault to parents or poverty or society. The Libertarians were reviled, ridiculed, even accused of sedition simply because they proposed that people should think for themselves. And at the time—late twentieth, early twenty-first-century America, by the way—the clear trend was toward bigger and more powerful government, even though socialist superstates were crashing left and right at the time. The United States government crashed not long after its rivals, of course. Government micromanagement of the economy.” He shook his head. “When ordinary mortals have trouble keeping track of their own credit balance, even with RAM implants and AI-assisted transactions, you can’t expect a committee, or a bureaucracy, to do better. And that’s when Dai Nihon stepped in and picked up the pieces.
“Anyway, what we’re proposing for the worlds of the Shichiju that want to shake free of the Hegemony is not another interstellar superstate, but something more like a loose alliance. A confederation of equals, rather than a centrist federal state. Something like what the framers of that first Declaration of Independence had in mind.”
“Are we going to get a look at this declaration you’re writing?” Hagan wanted to know.
Sinclair had smiled. “Not yet. The draft is complete and agreed on, but I’m still cleaning it up. Maybe later.”
The Saiko Maru docked at Eridu’s Babylon synchorbital a week after the events at Winchester, to find the underground buzzing with rumor of open revolt. Despite martial law, enormous demonstrations had continued to erupt in all of the major domed cities. Public assemblies of more than three people were forbidden, but there seemed to be no way of enforcing the rule without lining up a company of warstriders and opening fire. People would meet in twos or threes in a dome’s central plaza or park, the threes would mingle… grow…
And then the plaza would be filled, often with thousands of citizens. Apparently, these were less opportunities for public dissent than they were chances to communicate within the Network. Packets of RAM data were downloaded from person to person at these rallies as part of a kind of welcoming ceremony at the beginning, when everyone present would be asked to join hands for a moment in a display of public solidarity. Those packets could be letters or essays from Network leaders; lists of people arrested by the government; reports of rebel activity censored by the media; organizational directives; stories of government mismanagement, force, or stupidity; even copies of government documents lifted from secure files by Network hackers or by secret members still on the Hegemony payrolls. “Freedom of information,” Sinclair had noted, “has always been the foundation stone of individual liberty.”
Travis Sinclair used his commpac to make contact with the Eriduan Network from synchorbit, and then the party boarded a sky-el shuttle for the two-day descent to Babel.
Sinclair was in disguise, his appearance completely altered by the application of some specially programmed medical nano. He’d only trimmed the beard and changed its color to brown, claiming that no amount of tec
hnology could mask a weak chin, but the infiltration of submicroscopic devices into the skin of his face had puffed out his hollow cheeks, changed the look of his eyes, raised his hairline, altered his nose, and made him look at least fifteen kilos heavier. In gravity, he walked now with a slouch, and Katya suspected that he’d put something in one of his boots to alter his gait. The actual change in his appearance was slight, but the overall effect had been stunning. Wearing a fungus prospector’s synthleather bodysuit, which added to the illusion of greater mass, he was unrecognizable.
On the surface, Katya could see most of the city through the Towerdown dome transparency as she stood with the others on a rumbling slidewalk that carried them from the sky-el shuttle complex toward the heart of Babel proper. The city domes hugged the top of a bare rock plateau atop white cliffs plunging one hundred meters to the blue-violet sea. The city had a population of about thirty thousand, most of them employed either by the sky-el, the monorail service, or by a local company called Dahlstrom that provided local flora for several major Imperial pharmaceutical firms. A second, smaller town, called Gulfport, had sprung up along the coastline at the base of the plateau, some one hundred meters below, connected to the towerdown proper by funiculars and enclosed people-mover tracks.
From her vantage point at the top of the plateau, Katya could look east across the Dawnthunder Sea and see the crisp, V-shaped tracks of hydrofoils and hovercraft. Closer at hand, monorail tracks snaked their way above the red-and-gold jungle to the north and to the south; Eridu’s major cities were in the more temperate zones closer to the poles.
Dev, she’d learned, was almost certainly at Winchester, the planetary capital, some eighty-five hundred kilometers south of Babel.
They were met at the entrance to the Babel dome by a big, rangy, fair-haired man in a military jacket who introduced himself as Lieutenant Vince Creighton. On his left shoulder was a patch bearing a design in white and light blue, a horse’s head and lightning bolt above the numeral three. Katya recognized the device at once. It was the insignia of the 3rd New American Mechanized Cavalry, one of the Hegemony units stationed on Eridu, but Sinclair embraced the man like a long-lost comrade. “Not to fear,” he told the others. “Vince is on our side even if he hasn’t quit his job yet, right?”
Rebellion Page 9
