Paradise Drift

  Yes. She would be a leader of the arts. But to be a leader, one required wherewithal. She sighed, rising, and wished there was time to rest and think. Instinct clamored against it. No, she must not be caught unawares, once either Hunt or the Odin-Thor fools appeared to take her to her next challenge.

  So it was time to shut everything here down. She knew once it was done, it was done for good, but she had deliberately required the system to be designed that way. If she commenced the Ghost Program, and someone down in the lab was using the database, well, too bad.

  “I own it all,” she said in Vedran, enjoying the sound of the words.

  And she so she typed in the Ghost Program codes, and watched her console flicker. The program commenced two processes: one, the systematic emptying of all the lab data into her own flexi, a specially designed one that Delta had worked on for almost two years, exclusively. Absolute failsafe. In fact, it was this jewel of a datastorage system that had earned Delta the right to live past her twentieth year. Unlike the previous drones.

  Alphyra sang softly as she tapped in the next level of security codes, and watched the blue lights ripple in acceptance patterns. Now, a wait for the next level of codes.

  Five sets of codes, and there was the last prompt: Initiate?

  She hesitated, thinking of Delta, then shrugged. If Delta could not find a way past that idiot Vandat or those buggy Than in order to serve, then she had outlived her usefulness. There was no use in including her in the plans—which meant no duplication of data.

  Alphyra touched the tab, and watched the flicker of lights, a galaxy of dataimages, begin the march into her own keeping.

  For a time she watched, enjoying the metaphor, but a sudden yawn reminded her that she was not quite ready to shift her life to a new venue. She would need resources. All the private wealth she’d accumulated, through sales of illegal data, through the confiscation of her enemies’ funds—all of it needed to be transferred to one accessible form.

  She set that process going, and then sat back, arranging herself tastefully on her divan, to rest, to think, and to wait.

  Takauji prowled the corridors of the Bushido, bored. His brothers’ space battles had gotten dull to watch.

  As he walked down the dim-lit corridors, all under battle-stations lights, he wished their father would at least take them into battle. Something—anything. He wished he could return to Brigga, but she had, typically, gotten up and left as soon as their encounter was over. She’d gotten very good at those fast, extremely intense assignations, and she hated being contacted immediately after one was over.

  It was fun while it lasted, but it never lasted long!

  Takauji thought of the kludge women down in the recreation decks, then grimaced. No, not them.

  He sped up, wondering if he should follow up on Ashikaga’s idea. Why not? Maybe it would speed things along.

  “You have to protect Brigga as a source,” Ashikaga had said. “The best way to do that is to talk as if everyone knows the secret you are about to impart.”

  He’d thought he would wait until Otomo was on his way back, to spoil the surprise—assuming of course he did return with Daigo-Ujio’s head—but why not go ahead and set the game into play now?

  Takauji laughed to himself as he retreated to his cabin, and summoned his personal servant. “Everyone seems to be talking about my missing half brother being on that Drift,” he said, yawning. “Find out if it’s true. And while you’re at it, get me some hot sake from the galley, would you?”

  He waited a few minutes, then left figuring the word had to be zapping busily through the ship.

  As he prowled along the corridors, crew members instantly turned faces to the wall, heads bowed. He glared at those unoffending backs, then grimaced again when he thought of Otomo, who, when bored, had a penchant for prowling around just like this, in order to surprise crew who weren’t fast enough at deference. Pimiko, too. Takauji thought their taste for dragging off hapless crew for their particular style of fun and games a sign of stupidity. Where was the wit in watching some kludge get tortured? How many times could you listen to some dolt scream as his fingernails were probed?

  The Command Deck lay just ahead. Time to find out if the news had reached Command yet.

  Takauji paused, making sure his face was under control, then tabbed the entry code. Of course he had instant access, being one of the Alpha’s sons. He just rarely used it, and so his appearance startled Rommel, who was expecting the Alpha to return, since Minamoto and Otomo were still engaged in battle, and Pimiko first daughter was out there doing…something.

  He entered, and looked around.

  Rommel heard the doors hiss open, glanced at the security console, recognized Takauji’s code. He kept his attention on the main vidscreen, after a quick assessment of Takauji’s face. Bored—nothing new.

  Takauji watched the progress of both battles, and then said, “Otomo hasn’t breached that damn Drift yet?”

  The crew stayed silent. Rommel said, “No, Takauji-san.”

  Takauji sighed. “Why doesn’t he just demand him alive, if he has to play?”

  “He?” Rommel asked, watching the crew. All of them betrayed surprise. No conspiracies here, then.

  “Daigo-Ujio,” Takauji said, waving his hand. He loved exposing Otomo’s idiocy. “All over the ship—thought it was his reason for landing on the Drift. Oh, yes. You’re waiting for that genetics lab woman as well, are you not? Why not demand them together?” He yawned again.

  And, having dropped his little bomb, he turned to leave.

  Rommel could not, of course, cause one of the Alpha’s sons to halt, or even to pause, unless by his own choice. But he didn’t have to. Within one minute he’d discovered that crew on several levels were all talking about Daigo-Ujio being on the Drift, and Otomo going after him with a katana.

  There was no message from Tokugawa’s cabin. Of course. Rommel knew that whenever one of the sons came onto the Command Deck without the Alpha being there, a comlink opened automatically to his cabin, a fact the sons may or may not have known. The old man was seldom secretive, at least not in the sense that Otomo was.

  Secretive and silent were not the same thing, Rommel reflected, wondering if the news about Daigo-Ujio, once the favorite son, was actually news to Seii Taishogun.

  In his cabin, Tokugawa listened with part of his attention—the news was indeed no news at all—his eyes on the vid from the Drift.

  How strange, he thought, watching the tall High Guard captain in the absurd uniform, now filthy and bloodied, fighting against the pale-haired figures, like kama from an old screen.

  Digust twisted his innards, and he had to sit back on his heels and breathe to dismiss it before he could pick up his brush again. These Seraphim of the Kodos family were supposedly the pinnacle of their experiments? How strange, to assume that anyone but humans would feel reluctant to fight something beautiful—secondly, to assume that Nietzscheans sought to weaken enemies by such tactics, before battle was joined.

  Well, it was an enlightening demonstration of what the Kodos labs could achieve, if they were given proper direction.

  Meantime, though, this other matter, Takauji behaving so foolishly. That was nothing new; what was new was the impulse behind it.

  Shifting paradigms to the bleak, cold northern mythology of eternal warfare between gods and men, Tokugawa contemplated that extreme rarity in his long line: the trickster mind. Very rare in the family, very rare indeed:

  He set down his brush, leaned forward, and tapped a code.

  Perhaps it was time for the serpent of Midgard to remind Loki of the eternal verities of power.

  THIRTY

  Running a family is like running a state. Only the weapons are different.

  —FROM THE MUSEVENI COLLECTED PROVERBS

  Ashikaga did not make the mistake of assuming that his father’s summons was idle.

  He entered the old man’s cabin, and looked around. Kept chill, austere, and yet the pr
oportions were pleasing, the lighting muted, so as to enhance the very few pieces of art.

  Ashikaga placed his hands together and bowed, taking his time, knowing that his father appreciated grace more than degree.

  “I see you wear the robe of wheat stalks,” Tokugawa commented, indicating a white pillow just below his dais.

  Ashikaga’s heart hammered. He’d dressed carefully, in three layers, suspecting the summons—in the middle of battle-stations alert status—was no impulse.

  The white pillow, there within striking range of the ebonyhandled katana on the stand behind his father, that meant serious indeed.

  Ashikaga approached and knelt, again with care, hands on his thighs; one of his brothers had lost his head on this very pillow, having displeased their father. Yet to refuse would be to brand oneself a coward, and assure oneself a much more sickening death.

  Tokugawa did not look at him. He seemed to be entirely absorbed by the calligraphy of his poem, which he was painting on the rice paper laid on his low ebony table. One hand held a brush, the other was laid flat on the paper.

  Either hand could grip a weapon before a person could draw breath.

  Tokugawa waited, sensing his son’s thoughts. He wanted Ashikaga to contemplate the go board right now.

  When he judged that Ashikaga had assessed the dangers, and on the cusp of trying to plan ahead, he opened his game. “Do you remember who Loki is?”

  Ashikaga glanced up in muted surprise. “Of course, Otokooyasan.”

  Tokugawa looked amused. “If any of you boys remembered the Norse lessons, I would expect it would be you. Give me a simple definition, please: not his story, but his type.”

  “Trickster.” Ashikaga bowed again.

  “Exactly. You are my Loki, you realize, Kaga.”

  Bow. No speech. He did not dare.

  Tokugawa smiled as he made a swift stroke with the brush. “Was your clumsiness with your hapless brother deliberate or not?”

  “Otokooya-san?”

  Tokugawa waved a hand. “Am I mistaken? Was it actually our lazy Takauji who sprang Otomo’s secret communication? It seems more in your usual pattern. It was definitely your usual pattern, the way the information was just disseminated through the ship.”

  Ashikaga bowed. “He acquired it. I told him to spread it.”

  “Why?”

  The single word sounded mild enough, but Ashikaga’s nerves tingled painfully. He should have known that anything, anything at all, having to do with Daigo-Ujio, would cause his father to exert himself to find out everything.

  “Because Otomo did not tell you. Because we—I—thought he intended to take you by surprise with Daigo-Ujio’s head.”

  Tokugawa acknowledged the correction with a flick of his calligraphy brush. “Let me,” he said, “tell you the real story of Daigo-Ujio. Your older brothers know it. Now you will, not that it is long: his mother was my favorite wife. But I discovered, during the course of pillow talk, that she was becoming a Wayist.”

  Ashikaga looked up, betraying surprise.

  “Yes, you can imagine my dismay. A Nietzschean, not just any Nietzschean, but the Alpha wife of Pride Odin-Thor! Hoping if I acted swiftly I could circumvent the taint, I gave orders for the immediate canceling of her visitation rights to Daigo-Ujio, who showed such astonishing promise. He was younger than Minamoto, but far surpassed him in all skills. Otomo, even more so. I ordered her to be strangled swiftly, but my men discovered that Daigo-Ujio had vanished, taking his mother. Not just vanished, he’d assassinated certain of my best guards, wounded others.”

  He paused to make a slight upward stroke, completing a Japanese ideograph:

  Ashikaga suddenly wished he could read them.

  His father said, “I had everything frozen until I could inspect. Fifteen years old, and he’d gotten past all my lines of defense, and away. And his choice of death or life, in every case, showed forethought.”

  Ashikaga’s hands were damp, but he did not move them.

  “Where had he learned such skill? Of course I summoned his trainer, to discover that Daigo-Ujio had been training since a very early age in ninja techniques. And that the trainer scorned the philosophy of Nietzsche, in favor of the ancient Japanese Shinto mysticism.” Tokugawa sighed. “I thought only of honorable death, and struck off his head. I should add that he felt it his duty to submit, and did, in complete silence. But afterward? I am left with a headless man whose training was now lost, whose philosophy I have been shadow-tracking for two decades. What lesson do you take from this story?”

  Ashikaga bowed. “Patience.”

  His father laughed. “Minamoto said that I should have killed the woman and the boy myself. Otomo said I should have tortured the secret training out of the old man. And you, the only one of my sons with wit, say ‘Patience.’”

  Ashikaga bowed.

  Tokugawa pointed the brush at him. “I want Daigo-Ujio back. What sons he would make! I discovered his presence on that Drift by another route, not long after your brother did, and waited, curious to find out how Otomo would use the data. That is why I am here myself, and did not merely send someone to fetch Alphyra Kodos.”

  Tokugawa went on, knowing that he’d thoroughly defeated Ashikaga—for now. “You and Takauji seem to be the only ones among my sons who have the wit to perceive that civilization begins after dominance is established, and there is sufficient peace for the Shogun to make his vision real. The first strike of the sword is mere necessity: the first stroke of the brush is the birth of art, and thus civilization.”

  Three fast strokes, and he smiled down at his calligraphy:

  Then looked up, his eyes hard and cold. “It seems to be my fate to possess two sons who see only the necessity and mistake it for civilization, and two sons who are willing enough to perceive civilization—but not to lead.”

  Ashikaga swallowed in a dry throat, and dared a question. “What would you have me do, Otokooya-san?”

  His father smiled. “You will decide. For now, let us observe the unfolding of events. And never forget,” he added, “that there is a daughter who also sees necessity. And perhaps—I am waiting to discover—civilization.”

  Ashikaga bowed, rose, retreated, bowed to his father’s back, then withdrew, leaning against the wall to draw in a shuddering breath.

  Rommel, of course, he thought, grimacing. Despite Ashikaga’s quite thorough search, somehow Rommel had telltales in his cabin. Again.

  Well then, if privacy is impossible, the wise man pretends it’s possible, and chooses which information to impart.

  In the Paradise Drift Command Center, Reflections of the Sun turned to Vandat.

  “The Nietzschean ship has launched another flight of slip-fighters. They appear to be vectored on us, but they do not answer our hails.”

  “They are not flanking the Andromeda?” asked Vandat.

  “No, definitely not. They are headed here.”

  One of Reflections of the Sun’s trusted aides hummed dismally. “Yet another threat.” He gestured at the console before him. “Nietzscheans from the outside, and someone, judging from those traces in the system we are tracking, front the inside. Someone possessed of enormous computing power.”

  “Do you suspect the Andromeda?”

  “They have no more reasons to trust us than we them, certainly. And these seekers are cunningly fashioned. They yield no information about their goals when our immunodefense phages them—and that is something I would have said is impossible.”

  Vandat was silent for a time. “Perhaps the enemy of our enemy may be our friend,” he said at last. “Certainly they will not wish to leave their captain in the arena, and one would expect them to use more civilized methods than the Nietzscheans to rescue him.”

  “You wish to leave the seekers be?” asked Reflections of the Sun, humming in consternation.

  “No, but it does not sound like we are having much success against them, so we should be alert for ways to turn them to our advantage if we can.?
??

  The Than hummed in agreement; then all three turned to watch the swelling dots of light that represented the most urgent threat.

  Tyr sat back, surprised by the sudden cessation of fire. “What are they doing now?”

  Rommie onscreen froze, then replied, “Disengaged. Standing by. Incoming communication.”

  Tyr sat back; when he saw the face on the screen, he laughed out loud, and reached to tab the vid two-way. “Pimiko Odin-Thor.”

  Pimiko looked up at the slip-fighter’s screen, and saw Tyr Anasazi—a much older, tougher Tyr than she remembered back when they were young. “If it isn’t the Pride of the Kodiak!”

  Tyr’s white teeth showed. “Don’t tell me that fool Moto is sending you to wheedle me into surrender.”

  “I wouldn’t do Moto’s errands if it meant inheriting all of Loki,” she retorted, shaking back her long golden hair. The chimes she’d woven in tinkled musically.

  “No, you’d just take it,” Tyr replied.

  “Of course.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Now, are you going to clear me for landing or not?”

  Tyr made a sweeping gesture. She did not miss the irony, but she was in.

  “What do you expect from her?” Rommie’s tone was acerbic.

  “Some entertainment.” Tyr smiled lazily. “A way to set up the Bushi for a surprise. They never learn, my kinsmen.”

  He leaned forward. “Here’s what I have in mind.”

  “Aediles,” Ujio repeated, leading the way to the tube.

  “That’s what I thought you said,” Beka responded cordially. “A definition was what I was hinting about.”

  Ujio flicked out a chit—she noted he had six or seven of them— and very soon they found themselves going back through the door to the Roman Republic, the bots shrouding them both in the now-familiar togas. He looked over at her, black eyes sardonic. “You mean you don’t study history?”

  “All I need to know about history is that George Washington was the father of rock and roll,” she shot back, still in that cordial tone.