“What my Sailing Master tells you is true,” he said. “You have had your own reports of the disturbance when something from the Near Away swallowed still another of your spacecraft.”
A daimyo of Kyushu said, “We are by no means certain that something from the Near Away is responsible for our losses. Even if we concede that what you say is true, gaijin-sama. We have yet to hear what can be done about it.”
Duncan appreciated the adroitness of the Yamatan’s use of the term gaijin-sama. The Starmen were being called intruders and outsiders, but politely, in terms customarily reserved for lords of substantial domains and leaders of clans.
“The Terror--we use that term for lack of a better, since we know so little about it--the Terror appears to be attracted by strong emotions,” Duncan said. “Glory's Cybersurgeon thinks we might someday be able to avoid it by shielding our emotions. I find that doubtful. We cannot learn to hide again--as we once did on the savannahs long ago. Not out here, Shogun. We are a starfaring species and we will be so until we go extinct. Which might be soon, Shogun. That is why we are in Amaterasu space.
Your scientists have forced the door to open a bit more. The doorkeeper sees us even more clearly.”
“To speak of any natural phenomenon as ‘the Terror,’ gaijin-sama, seems--medieval,” Lord Yoshi, the daimyo of Takeda, said with lofty distaste. The incongruity of such a statement from a man dressed as a Sixteenth-Century samurai seemed not to have occurred to the Yamatans.
It was a fine point, Duncan thought, but the time to address the matter was not now. Duncan wondered which of the assembled nobles was responsible for the ninja attack in Yedo. The act spoke volumes about Yamatan attitudes. It appeared that the daibatsu thought the Wired Ones were a bigger threat than any mysterious force that struck out of nowhere.
Duncan said, “We speak of the Terror, Lords. You, of course, will speak of it in whatever terms seem suitable to you. But you must speak of it. The faster and the farther you travel, the more surely you will attract the enemy.” His gray eyes were level and steady. “We theorize that the Terror may not even live in the universe we know, or whether or not the physical laws we know apply to it. My suspicion is that they do not. I am not cosmologist enough to know. For that we ask your help. Your scientists are among the best of the colonials. But it can be deflected--our ship deflected it in the Ross Stars by beginning the process of putting all living things aboard into cold-sleep.”
“You ordered that, Kr-san?”
“Yes, Minamoto-sama.”
Duncan had the strong feeling that Minamoto no Kami and most of the rulers assembled in Dragonfly's salon approved. These were people, after all, to whom the act of seppuku was noble.
Duncan said, “I may be wrong in saying that it seeks--anything. We are certain of only one thing. It has an enormous power to kill, and I believe that anything that kills wantonly can be killed.” He looked at the members of the gathering evenly. “You have learned to duplicate one of its powers. You can open a Gateway. Now we must go through that Gateway.”
A daimyo of Kyushu, old and crusty in his manner, said, “It seems rather like an executioner discovering rope and offering it to lower us all into hell.”
“Not quite,” Anya interjected. “No one is offering Yamato rope, My Lords. Something quite different. See.”
At that moment Glory had appeared above the planet’s horizon and began its climb toward the zenith. It was a stunning sight, and as the seconds passed and Dragonfly's orbit began to synchronize with Glory's, the view became dazzling.
Glory aligned nearly perfectly with Yamato’s natural satellites. The effect was breathtaking. At first the Goldenwing seemed to hover over the disk of Moon Tokugawa, her furled wings ready to embrace the distant satellite. Above Tokugawa Hideyoshi and Nobunaga reflected the coppery light of Tau Ceti like mirrors of hammered bronze.
The decreasing distance between Glory and Dragonfly began to put the scene into scale, but no changes in perspective could detract from Glory's fantastic dominance. Her skylar was almost entirely furled save for the steadying jibs and spanker, relatively small, but brilliant, scalene triangles of ruddy golden light at bow and stem.
At the moment Glory flew in a vertical orientation to the planet below, so that the twenty kilometers of deck and masts was seen from far above, yet clearly in the airlessness of space, and surrounded with the zodiacal glow of her incredibly dense and complex monofilament rigging. In this attitude, Glory resembled a mythic creature. Anya felt the strong surge of satisfaction from Duncan. Her empathic sense assured her that this was precisely what Duncan wanted--that the nobles of Yamato should see Glory as not only beautiful, but formidable.
“My ship, Daimyos,” Duncan Kr said. “Within the hour I shall be honored to welcome you aboard her.”
11. The Small Queen, The Young Queen
Mira crouched on the young human queen’s nest, eyes fixed on the holograph displayed in the still air of the heart-of-the-lair. Inside the container, the young tom the human folk called Clavius groomed his elevated hind leg as Mira had taught him in kittenhood. It was a gesture Duncan spoke of as playing the cello--whatever a cello might be. But this was not the time for playing or grooming.
Clavius was not as clever as Mira would wish, but he was quicker than any of the other members of the pride, male or female. He was as clever as most of the humans in all that mattered, swift and strong, and inevitably given to tomcat vanity. We still have much to learn, Mira thought, knowing that the great-queen-who-is-not-alive was listening.
The other Folk were stationed throughout the length and breadth of the great queen; each had, at Mira’s instruction, established a territory over which they were enjoined by the great queen to watch. New humans were coming aboard and Mira remembered too well what had happened the last time strangers had been allowed within the world.
All her cognitive skills increased Mira began to think of the great queen as both a being and a world. This seeming contradiction did not disturb her. The Folk lived with contradictions--had done for thousands of years. It was a normal part of coexisting with human beings.
The great queen had warned Mira not to allow her natural territoriality to cause conflicts. It was important that the strangers should not be distracted from whatever it was the dominant tom, Duncan, wished them to do.
Mira remembered that long ago, when she was not so well schooled by the world, she had been both frightened and enraged by the thing she sensed in the vast darkness around the great queen. To the small cat quantitative distinctions were unimportant. Measurements simply did not matter. Any distance she could not leap was simply large. But it was not empty. She had known that from the moment she had awakened sharing her thoughts with the great queen on the table of he-who-cuts. She had perceived the Outside as a great room in which a savage thing hunted for anything alive. According to the great queen, humans believed that cats killed for pleasure. This was untrue. Cats reveled in the hunt, but they took no pleasure in the taking of life. The space surrounding them, even on the homeworld, was so enormous and so cold and empty that only life warmed it.
Yet menacing Mira's world was a thing that killed for pleasure, and she had reacted to the threat as the Folk had been reacting since time began--with arched back, bared teeth and extended claws.
Duncan, the dominant tom, had sensed this at once. He was a creature of powerful perceptions and empathy. There were times, Mira thought, when she could imagine Duncan clad in fur, a yowling tom with a beautiful voice and ferocious scent. In time she learned to accept the impossibility of her sexual fantasy, but she would forever consider it with a powerful and savage pleasure. Duncan became effectively a member of Mira’s disciplined pride, which was a new thing among the Folk.
The other cats accepted Duncan because he was large and powerful--but also because Mira was matriarch, and set the standards. With their mother's milk, her offspring learned to defer to and accept hierarchy. The individual who did not know his place must
fight for better. If he lost he was in danger of becoming an outcast. It was the Folk’s way of life. Mira’s patterns and abilities were bred into her blood and bone by ten thousand feline generations. Her new skills were only a gift from the great-queen-who-is-not-alive.
Mira was not yet totally at ease with human concepts such as “generations. “ But the great queen’s algorithms had been written by human beings, and she had begun imprinting Mira the instant she filed and saved the information that he-who-cuts had finished his work on Mira.
About this, the small queen made some judgments. Mira’s natural value system and Glory’s were almost identical. Both were at home with yes-or-no, go-or-no-go decisions. Glory did nothing to Mira to change her feline ways. Cats’ decisions seemed maddeningly deliberate to humans. And so they were. But once made they were instant and arbitrary, like a computer’s.
As leader of the pride, Mira decided for all. There was no appeal. There were many cats in the pride and some were larger and stronger than she. But Mira ruled. She was the queen, ready to enforce her choices with tooth and claw. Fortunately, the great-queen-who-is-not-alive was programmed to reject life-and-death conflict and seldom permitted it, even among the human folk.
Mira trilled a message to Clavius to cease his preening and pay attention to the view displayed by the holograph. He complied, understanding only a fraction of the information the great queen was supplying. Mira unsheathed her foreclaws in irritation and then retracted them. It was only now, after much teaching by the great queen, that she understood that she had the ability to be patient.
Clavius would learn, as would the others. Without knowledge, courage, shrewdness and, above all, an unfeline forbearance, the learning of the great queen, the courage of the humans and the wisdom of the Folk--all would vanish into emptiness.
Mira launched herself across the bridge to land, claws extended, on the fabric strips Duncan had caused to be placed everywhere around the great queen’s interior for the convenience of the Folk. From this new vantage point above the holograph Mira could identify the shuttle carrying the young queen, Broni, and the two sleds carrying the often frightened tom, Damon, and the persistent one, Buele.
It was Buele who seemed determined to become part of the pride. It was impossible, but Mira found she did not resent it as she once did. It made her aware that under the guidance of the great-queen-who-is-not-alive she, and all the Folk, were changing.
For a moment she allowed herself a flash of motherly satisfaction. Her offspring were, usually, a source of pleasure to her. There was Clavius, of course. Her particular favorite. In leisure moments she still groomed him as though he were a kitten, licking his ruff and broad head until the fur shone. Then there was Big, who was half again as broad as Clavius, a prodigious leaper and athlete with a regrettable--but forgivable--tendency to bully his siblings. Then there were Tail, Gem, Shadow, White Paw, and Stripes. Among the females, all of whom had inherited Mira’s small stature and graceful conformation, were Marissa, Beauty, Windstar, and Trekker. All names bestowed by the young queen, Broni. Names from her homeworld, Mira surmised from what the great queen said. Not all the pride had names. Naming was a human thing, one to which Mira was only now becoming accustomed. With or without names, Mira knew exactly where each member of the Folk was at any given moment and what he or she was doing.
Right now they were patrolling the vast cavern Broni and Damon had prepared for the accommodation of the strangers who were at this moment drawing near the great queen.
Mira felt the waves of half-electronic, half-neurological fear emanating from the Monkey House. The foolish critters were clinging to their sanctuary because they, too, felt the approach of human strangers.
Monkeys were inedible and they were too programmed to pose a threat to anyone. Yet in the Ross Stars, foolish men had callously killed one of the innocuous cyborgs. Perhaps, Mira thought, when matters were not so stressful, she would communicate with the foolish creatures. They had no true language of trills and cries, not even one of words like the humans. But perhaps she could manage.
After the human visitors were seen and judged.
She watched the sleds maneuvering to intercept the cloud of sparks that was rising from the curved lake of sunlight below. Mira had on rare occasion been a passenger on one of the small vehicles the great queen carried. At first she had not known exactly what was happening to her, but with the great queen’s all-knowing assistance, Mira began to interpret the information that flowed continuously through the tiny wire protruding from her skull.
She did not remember when, exactly, it was (cats were not great creators of time ladders) that she began to interpret what the human-folk were thinking. They were not always drogued, and at such times reading them was difficult. But when they, like she, were connected to the great-queen-who-is-not-alive, their mental images came through with great clarity.
Being with Duncan sometimes gave her solitary moments by a foggy gray sea and a chill, pebbled shore. At such times Mira would float in the null gravity, eyes unfocused, while nearby Duncan's mind would create pictures and strange, human-folk sounds: The sea of faith was once, too, at the full, and round Earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled--Mira received clear images from the dominant tom’s strongly empathic mind. She understood them on a deep, inchoate, but powerful level. Clearly the human words moved him deeply with images of his homeworld. I... hear its long, withdrawing roar... retreating to the breath of the night wind... Memories stirred in her awakened mind. Not of the sea, but of the dark savannahs her ancestors had known--
Mira, born in space, saw the image of “the world” in Duncan’s mind. It was not the homeworld that gave his kind and hers life. Earth was a world Duncan had never actually seen. The true provenance of his mental image was another place, a place of rock and sea very like the place where the night wind blew down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world, but colder still and more distant. At such times Mira lay in air, transfixed by the richness of the images that flashed through her small brain.
Her ability to share Duncan’s dream became a source of sensual pleasure to her. Here, within the great-queen-who-is-not-alive, joys were shared. She understood that all things happened because other things happened. To accomplish this breakthrough she had to make connections that went beyond those customarily made by her species. She even had begun to realize that her own young offspring were not so swift of mind as she because, though he meant to be, he-who-cuts was not infallible.
The cats were learning, as were the great queen’s human-folk. But Mira was filled with anxiety. Though she did not yet grasp the true concept of time, she sensed that there was little left. The hungry beast waited just beyond the darkness.
Broni, alone in one of the larger shuttles, could hear Buele’s vocalizations clearly over the radio-link. The boy was talking to a cat, probably the one called Big, who was his favorite companion. Buele had a habit of carrying Big with him when he flew one of the enclosed sleds. Duncan did not appear to mind. He even accepted the absurd notion of Buele’s that eventually Buele would teach Big to fly a sled.
Broni was concentrating on the navigational holograph she was using to pilot the shuttle. She wanted her performance to be perfect, but Buele’s babble was distracting. She was fond of her uncle’s former potboy and tolerant of his peculiar notions, but this was not the time to be discussing the human concept of hell with one of the cats.
The Yamatan ships were all in sight and closing on Glory's orbit in preparation for landing aboard, and Duncan had entrusted Broni and Damon and Buele with the task of guiding the colonists in safely. A botched landing could seriously damage Glory--a possibility Broni did not even care to contemplate. Like all the Wired Ones, she was fiercely protective of the great Goldenwing.
But Buele rambled on: “It should interest you, Big, this idea all humans have of ‘hell. ’ I don’t suppose cats have any such myths. You wouldn’t tell me if you did, would you? But have you co
nsidered the possibility that there really is a hell and that it lies in what the Yamatans call the Near Away? The devil might be real. He could be that thing that tried to kill us in the Ross Stars. Isn’t that of interest to you people, Big? You don’t mind if I say ‘you people,’ do you? I mean it as a compliment--”
Damon’s voice: “For God’s sake, Buele, pack it in, will you? The colonists’ ships are approaching orbit. “
“I see them. Brother Damon. Just stay with me if you don’t. “
Broni suppressed an impulse to giggle. It took some doing to become accustomed to Buele’s innocent bluntness. But he had innate skills and abilities that had been recognized even on their homeworld of Voerster. She remembered clearly how he had helped Healer Tiegen and the Captain Of the dirigible Volkenreiter to a safe landing during that terrible storm near the Shield-wall. Probably if it hadn’t been for Buele, neither he nor she would have lived to become syndics.
But the way he did things and the things he said. She rolled her eyes momentarily away from the holograph and swiftly back again. Buele was, as the Cybersurgeon said, quite a piece of work.
Damon was replying angrily to Buele. Telling him that he could see perfectly well, thank you, and needed no assistance flying his sled to the rendezvous point.
Cybersurgeon Dietr from Glory's bridge deck: “Less talk, if you please. Duncan and Amaya are probably listening while you embarrass them. “
Never, thought Broni. Duncan would never be embarrassed by things the younger Starmen said or did. He seemed to trust them completely, with a confidence-building self-assurance. It was probably part of his Captain’s persona, but Broni (and Buele, too, she suspected) would rather die than cause him concern.
With a flourish, she matched orbits with the advancing fleet of small spaceships. The shuttle was the leader of the welcoming formation, and Buele and Damon would have to match their actions to hers. That should keep the former Astronomer-Select’s potboy out of trouble for an hour or two. Of all the syndics aboard, Broni had the most empathic ability to pilot small craft. Her skill was not greater than Anya Amaya’s, she admitted. But it was certainly no less. Women seemed to have an innate talent for conning small spacecraft.
Glory's People Page 9
