Free Glory's People by Alfred Coppel Page B

him. It was peculiarly comforting, as though he were being gently but firmly guided into a slot, a position he could--and must--fill until Duncan was once more aboard.
    The Cybersurgeon was a man with little empathic Talent. He had served Glory for years by substituting intellect and curiosity for the empathic ability so prized among Goldenwing syndics. What he offered was accepted; he had always sensed that this was so, but now, at this moment, he felt an upwelling of love and gratitude for the whole into which he had, over the course of years and parsecs, been integrated.
    Glory spoke through the drogue: “I have located Duncan and Anya. The coordinates are in the communications console. Use the Yamatan com-net and tell Duncan that a Yamatan spacecraft was just destroyed and that others will be unless he can bring them aboard. “
    Dietr was shocked. Not by what the Goldenwing’s computer had just told him--he had expected that--but by the fact that Glory had spoken to him directly on a subject not related to his medical specialty. Shock gave way to pride and then to a strong desire to be worthy of Glory 's trust.
    He began the procedures that realigned the communications antennae. Glory was capable of performing the task more quickly and efficiently than any one of the syndics aboard, but Dietr remembered one of Duncan’s dicta: Never lose your humanity. Dietr also remembered the terrible encounter in the Ross System. An important part of one’s humanity was the ability to feel fear. It had kept early Man alive on the open savannahs of Africa. It might keep Glory 's syndics alive here, under the Tau Ceti sun.
     
    In the tube outside the bridge, Mira and three of her sons met and, despite their high anxiety, exchanged feline greetings, ritually sniffing one anothers’ pheromones. Mira’s brood did not yet think in abstract concepts. Their mentation was direct, without embellishments. But the concept of fear was a universal to all species originating on Earth, and among Mira’s kind fear was always accompanied by anger. Mira was angry now. The dominant tom called Duncan was somewhere in that light that could be seen through the transparent overheads, and he belonged with his pride, with the great-queen-who-is-not-alive, with the others of his kind, and most importantly with Mira and her offspring. He should be here, preparing to fight. But since he was not, Mira’s augmented mind sullenly accepted a substitute.
    The surrogate was not the-tom-who-cuts or the young-queen or the tom-who-speaks-to-the-frightened-things-in-the-rigging (Mira’s view of her world was expanding at a rapid pace as she approached full maturity, but it remained ailurocentric). The surrogate had to be the annoying young tom who irritated Mira and her brood by addressing them in their “speech ’’--a speech he would always know imperfectly because he lacked a supple body, vibrissae, scent glands and a proper tail, the use of which assets were vital to total expression in the language of the Folk. (Mira had slipped easily into thinking of her kind as “the Folk, “ meaning the true people.)
    Mira had accepted that Buele must stand in for Duncan. She could sense him still demanding her attention. With a swift switch of her slender tail and a trilled command, Mira marshaled her young hunters and prepared to fight the dragon.
     

8. Tsunetomo
     
    Minamoto Kantaro left the chashitsu as he had entered it, submissively on his knees. He did not stand erect until the teahouse was hidden from view among the garden trees. Where the path left the clearing and curved into a grove of Earth sequoias, he paused and brushed the stones and needles from his ornate court-dress.
    Many of Kantaro’s peers--samurai all--would have scorned his caution, but Minamoto no Kami was not only the elected Shogun of Planet Yamato, he was also the hereditary daimyo of the Domain of Honshu and Kantaro’s uncle and clan lord. If that were not enough, there was a genuine