Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1)

by Stephanie R. Sorensen

  Her lovely voice went on, but Tōru caught only occasional words as she pointed at this diagram and that one. His head throbbed in its own insistent rhythm. Small sounds scratched the inside of his skull. “New inventions…Better Babajis…sensor devices…night vision eyepieces…automatic rifle…high speed dirigible…engineering school…” He gathered she wanted to build all these things. All he could see and take in to his foggy brain was the soft curve of her jaw and the way it rested atop her delicate neck. A long lock of ebony hair had escaped her messy bun and lay curled over her shoulder just so. He was pondering whether she would be offended if he reached out and tucked the curl back into her hair when he realized she had stopped speaking and was looking up at him expectantly.

  He had no clue what she had just asked him.

  Desperate, he tossed the question to his friend.

  “Takamori, what do you think?”

  “She’s right. We’ve got to make the upgrades, even if it sets us back a few weeks. I’ll get working on the imports we need. Jiro’s already got some of the molds prototyped for testing.”

  “Let’s do it then. Great work, Masuyo-sama.”

  He hoped they hadn’t noticed his mental lapse. He hoped he hadn’t agreed to anything stupid. He vowed to stay disciplined and focused on their mission. But she was so lovely.

  A few weeks later, they had implemented many of Masuyo’s inventions.

  Tōru was particularly fond of the night vision eyepieces. Wearing them, a team could travel as fast by night as by day, without torches. Her improvements to the Babaji allowed integration with the telegraph system. Calculations could flow to the factories and merchants needing them, allowing just in time delivery of materials on still slender transportation channels.

  Train tracks now connected Lord Aya and Lord Tomatsu’s domains. Regular shipments chugged back and forth on narrow gauge rails between the domains. Gangs of track-laying workers raced to meet tracks growing from each of the allied domains.

  Curious laborers swarmed into towns where the alliance was building factories and laying track, eager to find work. Frightened at first by the strange sights, villagers who would never have considered leaving their ancestral homes were now fighting to be added to the various crews building out new factories and train tracks. Women, too, were clamoring to join the textile and sewing factories, and to work the Babaji computers, although the women from good families refused to enter the geisha houses. Soon Babaji and telegraph offices were sprouting on the respectable main streets of alliance towns, full of village women swiftly tapping out messages and tending the great mechanical calculating machines.

  The telegraph system now snaked through off-road paths cut through forested valleys to connect Lord Aya and Lord Tōmatsu’s domain to the east, toward the road to Edo, as well as all five of the original allies to the west. A separate line ran southwest to Lord Shimazu’s stronghold in the far southwestern corner of Japan. Babaji Difference Engines, safely hidden in geisha houses in each of the allied domains and tended by the working girls in their off-hours, cranked away. Information flowed smoothly to a growing network of factories, foundries and merchants, triggering action all bent on a single goal: arming the southwestern coastal domains against the foreign threat.

  Tōru nodded with satisfaction as he pored over the reports from yesterday’s production. His gun factory was already testing prototypes of Masuyo’s automatic pistols and rifles. Train cars were rolling out of a foundry run by a good friend of Jiro’s at the rate of one per week. Tōru needed ten or twenty cars per day to move even a tenth of the rising tide of cargo they needed to ship, but it was a good start. Jiro never complained when he thanked him for something and then asked him for ten times more. He just shrugged, made a crude joke and went off to find his crew and figure out how to deliver.

  Textiles and lacquerware flowed from their network of factories to Lord Shimazu’s traders, who sailed with them to Asian ports where they were converted into silver and gold, yuan and pounds and dollars. The returning ships strained under loads of manufacturing equipment, weapons and parts Jiro and his team couldn’t make themselves yet. Takamori worked around the clock with his contacts in Lord Shimazu’s far-flung trading network to keep up with Masuyo’s ever-growing demands for exotic parts and books to guide her innovations.

  Tōru had not forgotten his beloved sewing machine. Under his prodding, Masuyo had disemboweled the precious machine and painstakingly reverse engineered all its delicate parts. Next he had asked Jiro to make him one, using the first as a model. Here he ran into a giant, stubborn, sooty stone wall.

  Jiro liked casting giant things. Command him to create huge train engines or mounted cannons or even entire warships and he was in his element. Ask for tiny fine-tolerance parts and the blacksmith edged away making excuses.

  After weeks of relentless requests from Tōru, and endless excuses from Jiro, the stalemate was finally broken when Jiro found a watchmaker for Tōru. Tanaka, as the nearsighted clockmaker was called, the only one in all of Japan, made a thin living copying and repairing with hand-cast parts the occasional watches, clocks and mechanical devices smuggled into Japan for daimyōs curious enough about the West to risk being caught with Western gadgets. Tōru summoned Tanaka to their lab and gave him the task of figuring out how to manufacture sewing machines at scale, with near perfect precision. Tōru wanted 100 to start, with bigger ambitions to follow.

  The sewing machine factory he ordered built in his hometown of Iwamatsu. Tōru longed to go see it himself, but until the train system was in place, he could not be spared from his duties. He managed his impatience by checking on Tanaka’s progress each morning before starting his work for the day.

  Tōru and Saigo Takamori locked the lab behind them as they left after a long day. Masuyo had declared the evening off, for they were all weary and starting to make stupid errors and grump at each other. She had disappeared into the castle to dine with her father for once, instead of with the three young men as she usually did.

  Takamori shouted to Jiro as he walked out of the main gate of Lord Aya’s castle.

  “Going into town?”

  “Yes. The girls are waiting for me!” Jiro grinned broadly. “I promised them I would visit after work.”

  “Mind if we join you? I’m thirsty. Need a break.”

  Jiro motioned welcome.

  The three young men set off toward town in comradely silence, weariness dampening the conversation though not their moods as they walked. Tōru turned to look back at Lord Aya’s castle, now surrounded by dozens of buildings and tracks. He shook his head in awe of all that had been built in so short a time.

  “You’ve done a great job, Jiro. Gokuro.”

  Jiro smiled with satisfaction. A false humility had never been one of his faults. “We are building something great, for sure. Soon we’ll have the dirigibles too.”

  Tōru laughed, the laughter of exhaustion. “Soon we’ll have the dirigibles, too,” he repeated numbly, too tired to be excited. He felt overwhelmed with all the next steps that would create. “We’ll have to figure out how to fly them. We have no pilots.”

  Takamori shook his head. “Of course we do. Jiro here can fly them.”

  Jiro brightened at this fine idea.

  While he enjoyed being an engineer and the production chief, the dirigibles had fascinated Jiro ever since he heard of their role in Tōru’s plans. Jiro wanted to fight the evil foreigners as much as Takamori or Tōru did, but he knew the daimyōs would never let him be a samurai, even if an exception in such matters could be made for someone unique like his friend Tōru. Jiro nurtured a secret wish to join the battle against the foreigners from the deck of a dirijibi. In his secret reading and writing sessions with Masuyo, he dutifully worked through the kanji characters Masuyo made him memorize each day so he could write in his own language and create plans and diagrams for his workers to use. Afterward, he always asked to see the English diagrams for weapons and French plans for dirigibles.


  Since neither Jiro nor Masuyo had any idea how French or English sounded, they made up their own pronunciation. Both were becoming adept at puzzling out the English words and sentences and their meaning, enough to guide their engineering efforts. Jiro found the twenty-six Roman letters a vastly simpler task to learn than the several thousand kanji characters a stern but patient Masuyo insisted he needed to learn. Jiro took extra pains to work his way through the French dirigible plans, for it was his job to build the first dirigible. Masuyo joked that he was better at reading French than Japanese, a statement that while not quite true yet, was swiftly nearing truth.

  Masuyo had to test his reading skill carefully, for Jiro could often fake his way through by understanding the English and French diagrams even if he had no grasp of the foreign letters. In any case, his reading and writing lessons only fed Jiro’s desire to create and master these marvelous flying ships the foreigners had imagined. Jiro jumped on the opening Takamori had given him.

  “Hai, I could fly them for sure. I’ve been studying the diagrams, and the foreign newspaper stories about the first flights—”

  Tōru scoffed. “What do you mean studying the newspapers? You mean the pictures?”

  Jiro reddened. He had not meant to leak news of his secret new skill yet. “Yes, the pictures. And Masuyo explains the articles to me. The principles of flight and navigation are easy. We just have to—”

  “He’s the only one who can fly them, Tōru,” said Takamori, taking Jiro’s side. “I know I don’t understand how they work, and I am pretty sure you don’t either. Just because you heard of them first doesn’t mean you understand them better than any of us.”

  This time it was Tōru’s turn to redden as he was forced to admit Takamori was right. “The daimyōs would never allow it. He is a commoner. A blacksmith. You’ve heard them—the officers and leaders have to be samurai, and samurai of rank!”

  “Yes, he is a commoner. He is a commoner like my ancestors were commoners and everyone thought you were until few weeks ago. What of it?” said Takamori.

  “The daimyōs insist only high ranking samurai can command as officers or fly the dirijibi,” said Tōru. “I’ve argued with them for hours. They are giant stones who won’t budge.”

  “Don’t argue with a daimyō. That is your first mistake. You just make them stubborn if you do that. Do you think I got Lord Shimazu to send me to you by arguing with him? Of course not! I merely made it obvious that I was the only person he could possibly send and then leapt to obey when he commanded me to go!” Takamori grinned.

  Jiro followed the conversation closely, wondering how Takamori would make it possible for him to fly the dirigible. The frame of the first prototype was rising just outside the castle gates, each day appearing more like the photos in the foreign newspapers.

  “Rather than argue with them, you should invite them to make the first flight with you,” said Takamori. “At first they will agree, since it is their place as the leaders. Everyone is very excited about the dirigibles. Set the time and place for the first flight. Jiro should explain that is not a good time because of the wind or something technical that needs testing first. You argue with Jiro and perhaps even scold him for impertinence in front of the daimyōs.”

  “Yes, I am often scolded for impertinence,” said Jiro. “I have a talent for it, you know.”

  “Indeed you do,” said Tōru. He saw where Takamori was going. “Then they notice the risks and uncertainties…and they ask me if it is safe. I tell them honestly that we have no idea if it is safe or if it will work, and that we might all crash to a fiery death and therefore perhaps I should test it first myself before we endanger them.”

  “And I will be impertinent again and tell you in front of them that you don’t have a clue how to fly one of these dirijibi!” Jiro finished the plan for them. “Which is also true, by the way. I know how to fly one of these, and you don’t.”

  “You’ve never flown one either,” protested Tōru.

  “I have built one. Almost. Soon. How many have you built?” asked Jiro, with his broad grin.

  Tōru opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “See? Problem solved,” said Takamori, as he pounded Tōru on the back. “We have a fine dirijibi pilot, the finest dirijibi pilot in all of Japan, our good man Jiro here. Now let’s go get a drink, and meet some girls!”

  Back at Lord Aya’s castle, Masuyo and her father enjoyed their first private family meal in many weeks, eating together without company or retainers as they used to do before Tōru came and disrupted their peaceful life. Lord Tōmatsu had returned home for a few days, tugged by urgent messages from Lady Tōmatsu about the poor health of their young son. Masuyo and Lord Aya spoke of many things, the small things that families, even great families of noble lineage, discuss when they are alone without visitors, like repairs and local gossip, enjoying each other’s company after the long spell of frantic activity.

  After a third helping of fish and tempura, Lord Aya leaned back with satisfaction and regarded his daughter as he took a sip of tea. She smiled up at him, pausing in her story of the new cook’s difficult personality and how she upset all the other household servants on a daily basis.

  “You look happy, O-tō-sama. What are you thinking about? It is not our disagreeable cook, I can see that.”

  “Ah Toranosuke. No, I was not thinking about the cook. You’ve grown into a fine young woman. Your mother would be so proud of you. You are—you are more like her every day, the way you move and speak and think. She was so…alive, so lively, like you.”

  Masuyo bowed, a little shy suddenly at her father’s burst of words. “I am glad you find me so, father. I know I upset you so many times, working on our project. I try very hard not to anger you, but I cannot be a well-behaved lady playing my koto and practicing calligraphy all day when we have so much to do!”

  “I know, Little Tiger. You belong in your lab, I see that.”

  Masuyo looked at her father, her eyes suddenly moist at the supportive words she had not expected to hear from him. More often he was helplessly scolding her.

  “I worry about you. How will I find someone to marry you if you are in your lab all the time dressed like a peasant boy chanting drinking songs with Jiro?” Lord Aya sighed. His little daughter, now grown into a lovely young woman, was his world and had been ever since the loss of his wife. He could not bear to make her unhappy by forbidding her the lab and her work.

  Masuyo laughed. “Maybe I don’t need to marry! I will stay here and take care of you, O-tō-sama. That would make me very happy.”

  “You will want to marry someday,” he answered. “It happens, once you are ready, and the wanting takes you by the throat and lets you think of nothing else.”

  Lord Aya gazed off in the distance at an old memory.

  “Not me, father! I am happy here, with you, and my lab, and my friends Takamori and Jiro and Tōru. I don’t need a husband.”

  “Speaking of Tōru, what do you think of him?” asked the old lord, suddenly struck by a series of images he had not put together before. Tōru stammering every time Masuyo entered the great hall. Tōru staring off at his daughter under the pavilion’s shade the day he was named samurai. Tōru always glancing behind him as he rode or practiced fighting with the other samurai to see if Masuyo was watching. Now a new image joined these, even more disturbing.

  His lovely daughter blushed as red as the crimson of the kimono she was wearing. “Tōru? Oh, he is fine. A good friend. I admire him. He is very clever, don’t you think?” Suddenly she gathered up the used dishes and cups onto a tray and rushed into the kitchen, leaving Lord Aya alone with his newly disturbed thoughts.

  The team oversaw their growing network of factories, Babajis, train tracks and telegraphs from their lab. The four friends could usually be found in one corner or the other of the vast lab. The high-ceilinged room, bridged overhead by long wide beams from the mightiest trees in Lord Aya’s lost forest, was jammed with tables and desks
and workbenches scattered with diagrams, plans, gadgets, devices and prototype equipment in various states of assembly and experimentation.

  The mad clutter assaulted the eyes and overwhelmed the brain, even for those who toiled there every day and understood the many projects strewn about. In response, Masuyo had decreed one corner of the otherwise dreary workroom be left as a retreat space for the team, a place where they could rest and think and eat, away from the tumult of the workspace.

  Behind sliding shōji doors was a serene and near empty room, six tatami mats in size, with a low table and a tokonoma alcove adorned with a single scroll and an ikebana flower arrangement. Masuyo tended to the ikebana, refreshing it from day to day. Tōru marveled at her ability to go from engineering track switches and clambering over engine blocks in clumsy muddy boots inspecting Jiro’s handiwork to sitting in perfect stillness before the tokonoma as she transformed a ragged pile of greenery and flowers into small and exquisite works of ephemeral art.

  Late one afternoon, Tōru, Jiro, Masuyo and Takamori ate their lunch in Masuyo’s quiet room off the lab. They had spent the morning fine-tuning Tōru’s design improvements for his dragon dirigible airships.

  Jiro had survived the maiden voyage of their first prototype dirigible, more or less, although he now had a rather dashing scar on his left temple. The dirijibi had only suffered minor damage in the crash as well, and they soon had it back in the air. The burn scars on Jiro’s left hand where he had used his bare hand to make an emergency repair to the steam engine were healing nicely as well. Jiro had won the right to be test pilot on all future flights, now that they all realized he was the only one who could actually fly them for now, let alone repair them in mid-air.

  Now they argued over strategy for using the wondrous flying machines and defending Japan with their new guns.

  “We need guns trained on every harbor where foreign ships might try to make landing. Lots of guns, and bigger guns than what we have now,” Takamori insisted. Takamori’s master, Lord Shimazu, knew the foreigners better than any leader in Japan, through the contacts made by his vast trading network and his oversight of his vassal state, the Ryukyu Kingdom. Lord Shimazu believed forcible entry by the foreigners was a matter of months away, not years, and only guns would protect Japan.